Study of Customer Relationship Marketing Practices in Organised Retailing in Food and Grocery Sector in India: An Empirical Analysis

The fast changing trends in lifestyles, food and eating habits of consumers have contributed largely to the growth and development of organised food and grocery retail formats in India. But, this sector is predominantly (99.2 percent) dominated by the traditional kirana stores, which have strong relationships with the customers for various technical and functional quality benefits extended to them. This posed a great challenge to the organised retailers for customer acquisition and retention of loyal customers in this fierce competition. The paradigm shift in marketing practices from the traditional marketing to reactive marketing and then to relationship marketing have reiterated the significance of leveraging firm–customer relationship for reaping mutual benefits. Thus relationship marketing has come to the fore and occupied centre stage as one of the strategic tools for organised retailers to develop ways for attracting and motivating potential customers to remain staunch loyalists forever However, little is known about the actual influences of the cornerstones of relationship marketing on relationship quality and customer loyalty from an empirical analysis in the context of changing trends in food and grocery retailing. This study seeks to investigate the influence of relationship marketing cornerstones viz., Customer Satisfaction, Trust, Commitment, Communication on Relationship Strength which further explore the affect on attitudinal outcomes like relationship quality and behavioural outcomes such as customer loyalty. The study further examines an influence of the relationship quality on customer loyalty. This study is purely based upon the primary data and necessary secondary data to reinforce the model. A total of 150 retail customers in Hyderabad actively participated in this survey. The findings from the study indicated that customer satisfaction has emerged as a significant factor followed by commitment and trust for managing relationship quality and customer loyalty. Various managerial and marketing implications are extensively discussed.