Relationship marketing and the orientation customers require of suppliers

Increasingly firms are being encouraged to move away from traditional, tran sactional marketing towards building long-term relationships with customers . The majority of the literature examines the benefits to suppliers of adop ting this philosophy. It was decided, therefore, to examine whether the int eraction between customer requirements of the marketing style exhibited by their suppliers and customers' perception of style delivered by suppliers m ight influence service quality satisfaction. To examine possible interactio ns, a mail survey of 500 small UK manufacturing firms was undertaken to det ermine perceptions of services provided by accountants. The survey tool use d two new scales developed specifically to measure requirements and percept ions of relationship marketing style. Service quality satisfaction was meas ured in relation to overall expectations versus perceptions, reliability, r esponsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibility. Applying ANOVA to the re sponses from 141 firms suggests that service quality satisfaction will be h ighest where there is convergence between the marketing style required of a supplier and a customer's perception of the style exhibited by the supplie r The implications of these findings in relation to the need for further re search are discussed.