RELATIONSHIP MARKETING WITH REFERRALS:A CASE STUDYOF AN ELDERLY CARE CENTER IN BANGKOK

Abstract

        The objectives of this research were 1) to study relationship marketing management in business case studies; 2 ) to survey opinions on the intention of introducing new customers and opinions on relationship marketing management of the business; and 3) to suggest improvements in relational marketing of the case study business. The research consisted of interviews with two executives who set out guidelines for managing the relationship marketing of the organization. Questionnaires were distributed, the population was 120 registered business customers, the researcher assigned a sample size of 120 equal to the total number of customers as a purposive sampling. The questionnaire's validity check yielded a consistency index of 1.00. The results of the questionnaire were used and analyzed with a confidence value of 0.96. The statistics used in the research consisted of frequency and percentage, and non-parametric statistics, Chi-squared Test of Association was used.

          The research found that 1) the management of the case study business manages relationship marketing in 3 areas: Continuing education activities to understand customer expectations for service; Service care that exceeds expectations and managing communication with customers; 2) the results of the survey of the respondents, it was found that 81% of respondents were willing to refer new customers to their businesses, and the relationship study found that Continuous customer expectation study activities were statistically correlated with the intent of referring new customers of the respondents, p < .05, and Service supervision that exceeded expectations was significantly associated with intent to refer new customers at p < .05. However, the management of communication with customers found that there was insufficient evidence to admit that there was a relationship with the respondents' intent to refer new customers, p>.05 and; 3) suggestions for improvement, the management should invite relatives and related persons of the elderly who are customers to join the activities more, and should communicate through various
channels to let the customers' relatives know about good activities that the center provides for customers, this is because relatives and related parties are the ones who directly decide when to bring the customer to the service center. This may lead to the referral of new customers as targeted.