Traditional Marketing: Transactions and Exchange - Case Study Example

Satisfaction is an emotional state resulting from the buyer-seller interaction experiences, which leads to a consequential evaluation (Westbrook, 1981). Customers are satisfied when they get to lessen the transaction cost and/or ensure their security of future benefits (Sheth, & Parvatiyar, 1995). Customers also want to be the recipients of benefits, which may not be available in short-term exchange relationships within the long-term commitments of life insurance (Sharma, & Patterson, 1999).

The study by Garbarino and Johnson (1999) showed that for the low relational customers, overall satisfaction is the primary mediating construct between the component attitudes and future intentions. However, for the high relational customers, trust and commitment, rather than satisfaction, are the mediators between component attitudes and future intentions. Therefore, satisfaction leads to the long-term perpetuation of relationships that can be a sign of commitment (Anderson and Narus, 1990).

In the insurance industry, commitment to helping clients to have a high return on investment is hard to attain due to the constant changes in the investment environment. It has been suggested that a perceived high-quality image is an important variable in developing a quality relationship. Furthermore, Seines (1998) suggests that trust is an aggregate evaluation at some higher level than satisfaction, and that satisfaction, in fact, is an important source of trust.Based on the point if the view of sales relationship, the client’s trust is defined as "a confident belief that the salesperson can be relied upon to behave in such a manner that the long-term interest of the customer will be served" (Crosby et al., 1990). Also, Gwinner et al. (1998) considered that the psychological benefit of a trust is more than special treatment in service encounters.

However, the differences in perceived uncertainty and risk spell the difference between the trust of an individual and that of an organization (Anderson and Narus, 1990).