THE IMPACT OF RELATIONSHIP MARKETING ON BUSINESS PERFORMANCE ACROSS THE STEEL PIPE INDUSTRYIN THAILAND

Abstract

This paper aims to verify empirically the impact of relationship marketing on the business performance offirms in the manufacturing sector, with special reference to the steel pipe industry in Thailand. A questionnaire survey of166 salespersons in 30 steelpipefirms in Thailand was conducted. It was found that significant relationships existed between bonding, empathy, reciprocity and trust as independent variables, with performance as the dependent variable. Both the multiple regression analysis equation and the correlation matrix (Pearson Correlation) show that trust is the only variable that was significantly related to performance, the remaining independent variables were not significantly related to performance.