Relationship marketing practices for retention of corporate customers in hospitality contract catering

Abstract

Customer retention is specific to the context of each firm, and this is rarely recognized in models for customer retention. This paper studies how customer retention in hospitality business-to-business contract catering depends on the relationship substance built up due to interaction between the parties. Relationship substance may be of a more or less embedded kind, which is explored here in the form of relationship satisfaction and organizational change in the buying firm. A conceptual model is developed and tested on a sample of business relationships in business-to-business contract catering. The results support the fundamental effect that relationship satisfaction improves customer retention. The research also finds that the purchase development of contract catering customers increases retention, in particular if the customer who purchases more is also satisfied. However, when the contract caterer has achieved change in the customer firm, customer is reduced. Evidently, these customers consider that they are done with the seller and move to other sellers, or reduce their purchases altogether.