Effectiveness of relationship marketing investment on the customer gratitude based on the mediating role of relationship quality (case study: private sports clubs in Sanandaj)

Customer gratitude can be considered a promising tool for improving the organizations’ performances. For this purpose, the present study aims at investigating the effectiveness of relationship marketing investment on the customer gratitude in private sports clubs based on the mediating role of relationship quality.

This research is a descriptive-correlational study. Since the number of the statistical population is not determined, a number of 384 people were selected randomly based on Krejcie and Morgan's table, and a total of. 369 of 384 questionnaires were returned as completed to be used in the study. To collect the data, Dewani et al.’s (2016) relationship marketing questionnaire , Izadi’s (2012) relationship quality questionnaire , and Bock et al.’s (2016) gratitude questionnaire were used. The face and content validities of questionnaires were confirmed by experts in sport management and their reliability was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha test (0.95). For analyzing the collected data, the structural equation model (SEM) was utilized.

The results showed that the relationship marketing dimensions indirectly affected the customer's gratitude through the mediator of the relationship quality. The relationship quality dimensions were also effective on increasing the gratitude (0.97).

Gratitude is an important factor in improving the quality of relationship on the one hand, and on the other hand, it will bring positive results to the organization, which will create loyalty between the customers and sports clubs and strengthen their relationship.