Relationship Quality Scale

What it measures

Measures the overall quality of the relationship between a customer and a service provider across three foundational dimensions. Trust captures the customer's confidence in the service provider's reliability, integrity, and benevolence — the belief that the provider will act in the customer's best interest. Commitment captures the customer's desire to maintain and invest in the relationship — an enduring motivation to continue engaging with the provider. Satisfaction captures the customer's cumulative affective evaluation of the service relationship over time. Relationship quality is a higher-order construct that integrates trust, commitment, and satisfaction and is a stronger predictor of customer retention, share of wallet, and referral behaviour than any single component alone. Based on Morgan & Hunt's (1994) Commitment-Trust Theory of relationship marketing.

Representative items

• I can rely on this company to keep its promises. (Trust)
• This company is honest with me. (Trust)
• I feel a strong sense of loyalty to this company. (Commitment)
• Maintaining a relationship with this company is important to me. (Commitment)
• Overall, I am satisfied with the relationship I have with this company. (Satisfaction)

Citation

Hennig-Thurau, T., & Klee, A. (1997). The impact of customer satisfaction and relationship quality on customer retention: A critical reassessment and model development. Psychology & Marketing, 14(8), 737–764.