Relationship Marketing and Customer Shopping preferences: An Overview of Bulgarian Retail Business

Abstract

Relationship marketing has received significant attention from the business in the last few years. During this period of time, relationship marketing turned to be a major trend in marketing due to the ability to acquire and retain customers by providing excellent service, generating repeat purchases and creating other unexploited opportunities for the business. The main goal of the current research is to investigate how relationship marketing is influencing customer shopping preferences and how it could be used for improvement in customers’ satisfaction, loyalty and retention. The study will investigate what the customer shopping preferences are and how the companies can get advantage in a highly competitive market. For the research I decided to apply deductive approach. The study starts with reviewing the existing theories about relationship marketing and in the process of analyzing all the different results also highlights the main advantages of the company using this type of marketing strategy. The primary data for my research study was collected from a self-completion questionnaire with closed multiple choice questions. The questions are designed in a way understandable and time saving for the participants. No personal information is required. Charts have been used for better visualization of the results. I received 100 feedbacks from consumers who are making their grocery shopping in the two biggest cities in Bulgaria – Sofia and Plovdiv. All of the participants are greater than 18 years of age. The conclusion and recommendation sections present the most important findings of the research and offer possible changes which could be made based on the conducted data.