Abstract

In current situation, organizations are obliged to change their responses to the market. Based on this, they mostly pay attention to consumers and adopt long-term perspectives rather than short-term ones. Hence, organizations are facing a new relationship marketing strategy. Making use of correlation – survey research method, the present study investigated the impact of relationship marketing on the performance and mediating role of satisfaction, loyalty and competitive advantage variables. The population includes active pharmacies in Ardabil City within March 2017 – March 2018. To achieve the research objectives, 480 questionnaires were distributed among the customers referring to these pharmacies. Structural equations modeling and Amos 23 software were used for analyzing the data. Results obtained from data processing showed that relationship marketing affects significantly the performance of pharmacies in Ardabil. The positive effect of relationship marketing variable on satisfaction, loyalty and competitive advantage, impact of customer’s satisfaction on loyalty and performance, effect of loyalty on performance and also impact of competitive advantage on the loyalty were confirmed. The positive effect of competitive advantage variable on performance was also confirmed. Implementation of relationship marketing in pharmacies can increase the customers’ satisfaction and make them loyal, and also can increase the competitive advantage of these organizations. Performance of these pharmacies is enhanced under the impact of such relationships.