The nuturing of relationships with retail customers

Much has been written in the last 10 years about the nurturing of relationships with retail customers, but there is limited empirical research concerning the dimensions and techniques in actual use by salespeople. In this research Queensland sales staff of a national ladies apparel retailer were questioned to ascertain the behaviour they exhibited in order to nurture a relationship with their repeat customers. This behavioural study in Relationship Marketing (RM) was thus designed to identify and rank the relationship dimensions used to strengthen a long-term relationship. Sales staff were questioned about their behaviour through identifying their nurturing techniques, which are representative of the specific relationship dimensions. The results show that salespersons routinely used 13 specifically identified dimensions to nurture a relationship with customers. These 13 dimensions were widely applied by the sales staff and are ranked in order of usage rate. There is evidence that the techniques used are specific to a given retail product category and environment.