Effect of Multiple Relationship Quality on New Product Adoption: An Abstract

Abstract

Researchers have studied relationship marketing in a variety of subdisciplines of marketing including service marketing, channel relationships, and business-to-business marketing. However, prior research has predominantly focused on interpersonal relationships between service providers and customers and business-to-business relationships, as opposed to relationships between firms (or marketers) and consumers, even though the existence of such relationships has been explicitly acknowledged (Dwyer et al. 1987; Webster 1992). In this light, the current study examines the possible impacts of relationship quality (as a consequence of relationship marketing efforts) on the likelihood of a consumer’s new product adoption. Specifically, two research questions are addressed: (1) “If a consumer develops trust in and commitment to a firm (or a marketer), then is he/she more likely to adopt a new product introduced by the same (focal) firm?” and (2) “How would relationship quality with competitors influence the likelihood of adopting new product introduced by a focal firm?” The main goals of the current study are (1) to empirically test the effect of multiple relationship quality on consumer’s new product adoption; and (2) to provide a theoretical rationale for extending relationship marketing to the consumer product area and outline a future research agenda.

We propose three important categories of variables to explain new product adoption: product innovation characteristics (positive or negative features), personal characteristics (consumer innovativeness and product involvement), and consumer’s relationship quality of focal firm and competitors. The current study broadens the latitude of relationship marketing and its applicability, and conceptualizes that relationship quality is an important antecedent of new product adoption, which has not been studied before. The current study also examines the effect of multiple relationship qualities that consumer would have developed, which is a more realistic assumption than using only one single relationship quality with the firm that introduces a new product. The explicit conceptualization of multiple relationship quality will still be useful in further analysis such as comparative analysis of the effect of multiple relationship quality on retention in the business- to-business and service context.