Trust and Commitment in Professional Service Marketing Relationships in Business-to-Business Markets

This paper examines two very important concepts in marketing relationships – trust and commitment – whereby commitment is regarded as consisting of three components: affective, calculative and normative. The context of this study is professional services in a business-to-business market, more specifically the marketing research industry in Slovenia. The results show that trust in the marketing research provider and its work is very high among interviewed clients. The clients also appear to be affectively committed to the relationship with the provider, whereas calculative and normative commitment are low. The study’s results confirm the positive influence of trust on affective commitment and the weak negative influence of trust on calculative commitment.