Relationship marketing versus relationship quality & customer loyalty in food retailing Prasad J S, Research Scholar, Aryasri A R, Professor & Director SMS, JNTUniversity, Hydrabad, India. Abstract The purpose of the study is to examine the influence of relationship marketing attributes such as Trust, Commitment, Communication, Empathy, and Conflict handling on attitudinal outcomes like relationship quality and behavioural outcomes like customer loyalty from an empirical analysis in the context of changing trends of food retailing in India. The study further examines the impact of relationship quality on customer loyalty. The study is purely based on primary data and necessary secondary data to reinforce the model. A total of 300 food retail customers from leading food retail outlets, supermarkets and hypermarkets in Hyderabad are surveyed by using structured and non-disguised questionnaire with mall intercept method. The statistical tools like mean, standard deviation, correlations and regressions are employed to examine the impact of each attribute on relationship quality and loyalty. The results reveal that all attributes except conflict handling have a positive moderate impact on relationship quality and customer loyalty. The results further prove that relationship quality has significant influence on customer loyalty. This study contributes invaluable information to both academicians and retail managers for their theoretical and practical purposes. Findings, various managerial and marketing implications are extensively discussed. Top Keywords Trust, Commitment, Communication, Empathy, Conflict handling, Relationship Quality, Customer loyalty, Food retailing. Top |