Managing Customer Relationship Activities for the Favorable Relationship Strength: a Competence-based Perspective in the Context of a Chinese Service Industry

Relationship strength has become one of the focal concepts in relationship marketing and customer relationship management. Consequently, in practice, how to build strong relationship with VIP customers has become the priority of managers. However, little is known about how to manage relationship activities for the favorable relationship strength with VIP customers. This study aims to bridge this gap by examining how competences for each key relationship activities may impact relationship strength directly or indirectly by way of customer trust and satisfaction by taking a competence-based perspective. Furthermore, the role of customer value innovation has been studied as well in this study.