Relationship Strength in Service Industries: A Measurement Model

Abstract

Although one of the key objectives of relationship marketing is to build a strong relationship with customers, the construct of relationship strength is recent and there is little research into its measurement and validation. Based on an intensive literature review, relationship strength is conceptualised and a tridimensional measurement model is proposed that comprises affective strength, cognitive strength and conative strength. Then, a measurement scale of relationship strength in the context of selling services is developed and validated. The empirical results indicate that the measurement scale has acceptable levels of reliability, unidimensionality, convergent validity, discriminant validity and nomological validity.