Relationship Marketing in a Self-Service Context: No longer applicable?

To explore the impact of the use of self-service technologies on interfirm relationships, a grounded theory study was conducted. This article reviews the results and implications of an exploratory study conducted with a sample of Australian business bank customers and interviews with 6 Australian financial institutions. Findings indicate that 2 customer segments exist—a transaction-oriented segment and a relationship-oriented segment. Unlike existing literature that states that bank customers prefer relationships (K. Eriksson & R. Marquardt, 2001 Eriksson, K. and Marquardt, R. 2001. Is relationship theory applicable to Internet bank relationships?, Oslo, , Norway: Paper presented at the 17th Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group Conference. [Google Scholar]), the present findings indicate that this is only the case for 1 segment of business customers