Abstract:

Relationship marketing has become a core issue for business in the last few decades because there is a continuing growth of service industries in the economy (Lehitnen, 1996), and customer buying patterns are changing rapidly (Buttle, 1999). Building relationship with customers is crucial for business to sustain competitive advantages (Wong and Sohal, 2002). The application of marketing concepts in education setting is rather low, and research from the relationship perspective in education setting is also minimal (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2001). Therefore, there is a need to have research in education setting from the relationship perspective.