Influence of relationship marketing orientation on building customer equity in commercial banking sector of Sri Lanka

As the organizations look for sustainable competitive advantage as a powerful tool for differentiation, in recent years, the traditional transaction approach has been challenged and shifted to relationship marketing. In order to score more on customer equity almost all the organizations surrounded by relationship marketing components. The ultimate aim of the relationship marketing is to produce the high customer equity which consists of three key drivers: brand equity, value equity, and relationship equity. Among these three drivers, brand equity is considered as more important than the others as it is more powerful mechanism to create sustainable competitive advantage for the organizational concern. Thus this study examined the research problem of whether Relationship Marketing Orientation (RMO) impacts on brand equity in Sri Lankan licensed commercial banks. This research was carried out with the objectives of evaluating the impact of RMO on brand equity in Sri Lankan licensed commercial banks. Furthermore conceptual model has been developed to link RMO and brand equity. Trust, bonding, communication, shared value, empathy and reciprocity are considered as the dimensions of RMO. Similarly brand loyalty, perceived quality, brand image and brand awareness are the dimensions of brand equity which were extracted from literature. Quantitative methodology has been applied and questionnaire was used to collect data.1000 household customers have been selected from 100 licensed commercial banks that comprised of public and private based on quota sampling method. Multiple regression has been used for the analysis. Findings revealed that there is a positive and significant impact of RMO on brand equity in Sri Lankan licensed commercial banks and that influence more on building customer equity as sustainable competitive advantage. Therefore the managers of these organizations should be very concern about relationship marketing components in order to increase the value of their customer equity as well as brand equity.