Empirical Study Of The Role Of Customer Gratitude In Enterprises’ Relationship Marketing

In the1970s, as western business operation mode of constantly updated, with the improving of people’s living standards, Service industries was flourishing development. So, the traditional transactional oriented theories can no longer apply to the actual marketing management in an enterprise. In order to adapt to the development of The Times; For the enterprise expands. Nordic marketing scholars proposed new ideas that building and managing "relationships" to win market. By the1980s, marketing scholars introduced the relationship marketing literature, since then relationship marketing become a marketing academic and business focus. And, many scholars believed that to establish and maintain the stable customer relationships is a major marketing go, which can maintain the market, occupy the market, beat in the market competition.Until now, relationship marketing theory has developed more than20years. Relationship marketing theory created great wealth for enterprise in the20years of development history. In order to adapt to changing market, relationship marketing theory are constantly enriched. for instance, at the beginning, marketing scholars pointed that enterprise should establish good business relationships with consumers, afterwards, the study of the relationship quality, the study of the guests’ perceptive value, and the value of customer relationship management made the relationship marketing theory content special excessive. However, every theory should own her fundamental and most core ideas. Author consider that Morgan and Hunt have proposed the fundamental and most core ideas of theoretical model in the relationship marketing theory——The conceptual model based on consumer trust and commitment. If we use consumer behavior theory to analyze it, we may have a good understanding of consumer’s reaction process from cognition to emotion, eventually forming purchasing. As one of the basic classic theory model, the trust--commitment model of relationship marketing not only guides enterprise actual marketing management activities, but also provides a strong theoretical support to the academic research.Because of the importance of the trust--commitment model, both many scholars and the marketing managers emphasis the trust and commitment act a important role in the Consumers’ purchasing behavior process. However, a meta-analysis based on more than38,000relationships that tests the commitment-trust-mediated model of RM reveals a surprising finding:RM investments have a direct effect on Consumers’ purchasing behavior that is actually greater than the effect mediated by trust and commitment. Although the meta-analysis confirms prior research by providing support for the roles of trust and commitment, its finding also suggests that the extant RM model is missing one or more important mediating mechanisms that researchers need to understand to appreciate the impact of RM on Consumers’ purchasing behavior. Similarly, a recent longitudinal study of interorganizational relationship performance reveals that seller relationship investments have a direct effect on Consumers’ purchasing behavior, unmediated by customer trust, commitment, or relational norms, and it suggests that researchers should investigate "other possible mediating mechanisms(e.g., reciprocity, exchange effectiveness, gratitude)".So, based on previous studies achievement, author apply the gratitude to theory of enterprise relationship marketing to establish the model of perception relationship investment, gratitude, relationship quality and Consumers’ purchasing intention. Though analysising the sampled data from the bank in ChengDu, author get the conclusion:Gratitude plays a great role in enterprise relationship marketing in the market background of China. The more perception relationship investment, the more consumers’ gratitude to enterprise. The gratitude can impact trust to enterprise and consumers’ purchasing intention positively. This study not only verifies the relationship marketing theory model based on trust and commitment, but also proves that Gratitude plays a great role in enterprise relationship marketing.