Culture and relationship marketing in neighborhood stores: Analysis of a peripheral region in Colombia

Abstract

Neighborhood stores are a business that is rooted in the social and economic structure of societies in developing countries, so their importance in these areas is attractive to analyze from an academic and research perspective. This study evaluated the influence of culture on relationship marketing between neighborhood merchants and their consumers from an alternative perspective to traditional approaches. Thus, a consumer is presented as a human being inserted in a social reality and not as a matter of simple exchange. The study was quantitative in nature, approached from the deductive and correlational method, for which a survey-type measurement instrument with a Likert scale was generated and validated that evaluated the relationship between variables. The reliability of the scale was measured using Cronbach’s Alpha, obtaining acceptable results for culture (a: 0.85) and relationship marketing (a: 0.93). The results indicate a positive relationship between culture and relationship marketing: trust (0.789; p < 0.00), commitment (0.658; p < 0.00), satisfaction (0.853; p < 0.00), and loyalty (0.753; p < 0.00), so that business relationships in a neighborhood store are based on cultural considerations established and maintained in constant interaction between participating members: shopkeepers, consumers, friends and relatives who attend it with some frequency, have these ties deep, since they have been appropriated through the performance of ceremonies and rites in which values, beliefs, mental representations, trust, commitment, satisfaction, and loyalty of the actors involved are implicit, giving vitality to the relationship between buyers and sellers, which they themselves call “socializing links”. AcknowledgmentThe authors thank the Universidad Surcolombiana and the Universidad del Norte for their support in the development of the research.