Drivers and contingency factors influencing the effectiveness of relationship marketing are evaluated though a meta-analysis of 38,000 relationships across 94 studies.

1. From:From:
 What is relationship marketing? All marketing activities
directed toward establishing, development, and maintaining
successful relational exchanges
 Key Insight:
The value of relationship marketing effectiveness can vary
significantly
 Data:
Sample of 94 previous studies integrated
38,000 firm-customer relationships evaluated
Relationship Marketing
Palmatier, Dant, Grewal, and Evans (2006)

2. From:From:
 Relationships have the strongest impact on customer
word-of-mouth (r = .61, p < .01) and loyalty (r = .52, p < .01)
 Relationships have a strong impact objective
measures of company financial performance (r = .35, p <
.01)
How customer relationships affect
performance
Palmatier, Dant, Grewal, and Evans (2006)
Note: Numbers reported are sample size weighted reliability adjusted correlation coefficients.

3. From:From:
 Most Effective: Company expertise and communication
 Effective: Making investments in relationship, matching seller
and customer on similarity, and ensuring there are
relationship benefits
Effective relationship building strategies
Palmatier, Dant, Grewal, and Evans (2006)

4. From:From:
 Selling services versus products
 Dealing with business customers (B2B) versus consumers
(B2C)
 Dealing with channel partners versus directly with customers
 When the target of the relationship is an individual (e.g.,
salesperson) versus a firm (e.g., firm)
Palmatier, Dant, Grewal, and Evans (2006)
Relationship Marketing is most effective at
driving firm performance when…