Relationship Marketing Practices in Community Pharmacies in Nigeria

The study identified the types of relationship marketing (RM) practices, determined the components of RM that fostered customer loyalty (CL) and evaluated the influence of the RM components on CL in community pharmacies. It was a cross-sectional survey of community pharmacies, pharmacists, non-pharmacist staff and customers. Random sampling was employed to select 40 community pharmacies, while purposive sampling was used to select four staff from each of the community pharmacies (160). Accidental sampling was used to select 510 customers of the pharmacies. Data were obtained with the questionnaire and analysed using appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics. Social RM practices yielded optimal results. The RM components that were determined were trust (TR), commitment (CMT), competence (CP), communication (CM), conflict handling (CH) and accessibility, which accounted for 55.4% of the total variance that occurred in CL. All the components of RM had positive but significant influence on CL with varying magnitudes. The study revealed that the types of RM practices in community pharmacies were the giving of loyalty gifts to customers, personalised telephone CMs, calling customers by name and special greeting codes. Also, special discounts and credits were offered to certain customers in order to build relationships. All the RM components positively influenced CL. Easy A to the pharmacies and pharmacists proved to be most influential in building loyalty followed by CM. The study concluded that RM practices in community pharmacies hold a lot of promise for community pharmacies to sustain their existing customers.