Customer trust as mediator in the creation of customer relationship intention

Abstract

As in all service industries, banks need to be able to provide their customers with personalized services in order to ensure that they build and maintain long-term relationships which are mutually beneficial. As such, banks must adopt a relational marketing approach based on effective communication and the building of trust with the current customers instead of focusing on acquiring new customers. The current research provides insights into how banks can build trust and maintain their relations with existing customers by testing several predictors of customer trust and customer relationship intention. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine economic content, resource content and social content as the predictors of trust and relationship intention, and trust as a predictor of relationship intention. In addition, this study also analyzes the role of trust in mediating among economic content, resource content, and social content as a predictor of relationship intention of state owned bank customers in East Java. The sample of the study is formed of 120 customers of three state-owned banks from East Java. The research variables consist of three exogenous variables: economic content, resource content, and social content. The endogenous variables are trust and relationship intention. The data was collected using a questionnaire with multiple items measured using Likert scales. The model was analyzed using SEM with AMOS version 18.0. The result shows that economic content, resource content and social content are positive and significant predictors of trust and relationship intention. The role of economic content, resource content, social content as direct predictors is higher than the mediating role of trust of state owned bank customers.

Keywords

• economic content
• resource content
• social content
• trust
• relationship intention