The Influence of Relationship Marketing Orientation (RMO) on Customer Retention in Travel Agency Services

Abstract

The advancement in information technology had influenced customer attitude, behavior, and lifestyle in purchasing holiday and travel services. There are significant shift from utilizing travel agency to online travel agents. These change had pressured, travel agency to consider on refining their strategy to focus more on relationship marketing orientation (RMO) to achieve customer retention. The impact of RMO on the business or firm performance has been widely studied by previous literature in the organizational contexts. However, the empirical research from the customer perspective is rather limited. Therefore, this conceptual paper is proposed to fill in the RMO literature gap by focusing on the relationship between RMO and customer retention from the customer perspective. Academically, this study contributes to the literature of RM in business-to-customer context specifically from customer point of view and practically to the travel agency in comprehending RMO in enhancing their services in the travel agency sector.