The Effects Of Relationship Quality, Customer Perceived Value And Switching Costs On Customer Retention

This study was designed to examine in the cosmetics retail industry, What are the main factors that determine customer retention and what’s the relationship between these factors and how they influence customer retention. This study set relationship quality, customer perceived value and switching cost as the three main factors that effects customer retention, Based on the theoretical analysis and literature review, the establishment of a structural equation model and several assumptions was proposed. The questionnaire was developed according to the reality of cosmetic purchase behavior and mature scale. The questionnaires were collected both online and offline.165 valid questionnaires were gathered. Then SPSS 19.0 and AMOS 21.0 software were used for data analysis.The results displayed that in the structural equation model. Customer perceived value has no direct significant impact on customer retention but have significant positive indirect effect on customer retention through the entire mediating variables relationship quality. Both relationship quality and switching cost have direct significant impact on customer retention. Moreover, Customer perceived value is positively correlated with switching cost and relationship quality. In contrast with the hypothesis, relationship quality has no direct impact on switching cost.The main contribution of the study is further sorted out the main factors and mechanism of these factors that result in the cosmetics retail customer retention. Found the important role customer perceived quality and relationship quality played in customer retention process. The study also put forward several suggestions according to the customer buying behavior and a few retail company’s tactics which have done a good job on customer retention.There are limitations regarding the questionnaires collected and industries the study conducted. Future research should apply for more industries, and some of the moderating variables can be chose to have a more comprehensive analysis and study.