Investigating the Effect of Intimate Relationship with Customers on Their Loyalty

In today's ultra-competitive world, customers are placed at the forefront of attention of firms and organizations, and their loyalty is believed as the main factor helping organizations to achieve competitive advantage. Meanwhile, role of friendly and intimate relationship of staff with customers in Service sector is of a radically high importance. The aim underlying the present research was to investigate customers' loyalty and one of its key variables, i.e. intimacy with customers, and the variables Confidence and Satisfaction were also examined as intermediate variables. The research is a qualitative one in which, using a questionnaire, the data required were gathered form the customers of Keshavarzi banks in Golestan province. Moreover, Pearson Product Correlation Coefficient test was used to analyze the research hypotheses. The findings indicate that there is a positive and significant relationship between intimacy and customer loyalty. It was also shown that the variables confidence and satisfaction have a positive effect on the creation of loyalty in customers.

Loyalty, Intimacy, Confidence, Satisfaction.