The customers' perspective on relational benefits in banking activities

The nature of banking activities is based on the relationship with the customer in as much as this activity implies direct contact. In this paper, some fundamental questions for the development of relationship marketing activities within the financial firms will be analysed. In particular, this paper intends to demonstrate that it is possible to divide up the market into different types of consumers according to the customers' perspective on relational benefits. This paper bases itself on the perception and evaluation of relational benefits by the customer: with this objective in mind, an empirical study was carried out in various financial firms. This study contrasted the evaluation given by each customer to the different relational benefits.