Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Theses and Dissertations

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    Customer relationship marketing and customer retention in the food and beverages industry in Southwestern Nigeria.
    (Management and Accounting,Obafemi Awolowo University, 2019) Agelebe, Ibiwunmi Bosede
    This study ascertained the extent of adoption of customer relationship marketing strategy in the food and beverages industry; investigated the challenges faced by the food and beverages industry in adopting customer relationship marketing practices; examined how customer relationship marketing drivers enhance customer retention in the food and beverages industry and investigated the influence of customer relationship marketing on customer retention. These were with the view to providing information on how customer relationship marketing enhances customer retention. Primary data was employed for this study. The study population was 18,071 which were the staff of eight purposively selected companies in the food and beverages industry in Southwestern Nigeria having their headquarters in Lagos, Ogun and Osun States. The three states were selected because they either have food or beverages companies’ headquarters located in them. The sample size was derived using Taro Yamane formula, while proportionate stratification method was employed in obtaining the sample from the selected companies. The middle and lower class managers were purposively selected as the respondents for this study because they are set of staff who have close relationship with the customers. Questionnaire was used to gather pertinent information from the respondents. The data collected were analysed using frequency distribution, percentage, mean, graphs, ranking, factor analysis, ordered probit and logit. The results showed that 78.01% respondents expressed their view that relationship marketing was practiced by the food and beverages industry and that the level of adoption of relationship marketing by the food and beverages industry was high (58.06%). Furthermore, the results revealed that the challenges faced by the food and beverages industry in adopting CRM were difficulty in establishing direct contact with customers, misunderstanding of customers’ needs, creation of customer database, employees not being customer-centric, inadequate resources, lack of technological support and inadequate training among the staff. However, lack of technological support was ranked as the most challenge faced by the industry while inadequate training among the staff being the least. More so, using ordered probit regression, the results revealed that trust (t = 2.37, coef. = 0.771 and p < 0.05) and customer satisfaction (t = 2.67, coef. = 0.852 and p < 0.05) were identified as the major relationship marketing drivers influencing customer retention. However, the pairwise correlation matrix revealed that there is a positive relationship between trust, commitment, customer satisfaction, communication and customer retention. Hence, indicating that these drivers influence customer retention. The results further revealed that firms that adopt customer relationship marketing were 1.4 times more likely to improve significantly (t = 0.99, β = 1.412 and p < 0.01) their ability to retain customers than those that adopt only transactional marketing, however, firms that adopted the two (i.e. both relational and transactional) were likely to be two times (t = 0.99, β = 2.460 and p < 0.01) better in their ability to retain customers. The study concluded that customer relationship marketing significantly influenced customers’ retention in the food and beverage industry.