ISSN: 2222-6990
Open access
The timber and timber products industries are among Malaysian top three contributors of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the commodity sector. It is an important segment of Malaysia’s manufacturing sector contributing to RM 22.5 billion in export and 1.6% of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2019. Moreover, Malaysia is one of the world’s largest exporters of tropical timber and timber products, hence, it is important for the players in this industry to maintain its sustainable competitive advantage. In this respect we argue that strong relationship created by both seller and buyer may motivate customer to buy more often and in greater quantity. This article aims to measure the strength and direction of the relationship between three (3) dimensions of relationship marketing which include communication, commitment and customer satisfaction and the performance of PESAKA Terengganu Berhad, a Terengganu state-owned sawmill company. A purposive, systematic sampling was adopted in this research and the respondents were chosen from business customers who has been dealing with PESAKA Berhad., for at least one year. A Questionnaire is chosen as the instrument for this research and it was completed and returned by 73 respondents. Results of the descriptive analysis revealed that the perceptions of the majority of respondents were positive and significant on the influence of the relationship marketing on PESAKA’s performance. The correlation analysis revealed that all the elements of relationship marketing are found to have a significantly positive and moderate level of correlation with PESAKA’s performance with correlation value ranging from 0.497 to 0.626. The results of the Regression analysis revealed that there is significant and positive relationship between all the independent and dependent variables. Based on the results of these analysis, PESAKA’s management should focuses more on satisfying the customers as well as building trust in order to build favourable perception from its customer. This perception is important because trust will create a belief that the company is doing their best to cater to the needs and preferences of customers which will ultimately improves PESAKA’s long term performance. Future research should include a larger number of respondents from different industries and location around the country. Additional variables should also be included as part of the independent variable such as trust, benevolence, credibility, integrity and reliability.
Alon, I., Jaffe, E., Prange, C., & Vianelli, D. (2020). Global Marketing: Contemporary Theory, Practice and Cases. Routledge
Armstrong, G. M., Kotler, P., Harker, M. J., & Brennan, R. (2018). Marketing: an introduction. Pearson UK.
Beckers, S. F., Van Doorn, J., & Verhoef, P. C. (2018). Good, better, engaged? The effect of company-initiated customer engagement behavior on shareholder value. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 46(3), 366-383.
Budianto, A. (2019). Customer loyalty: quality of service. Journal of Management Review, 3(1), 299-305.
Candra, S., & Peolana, F. (2019). The Effect of Relationship Marketing In Indonesian Cosmetics Market. Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews, 7(6), 416-424.
Cortez, R. M., & Johnston, W. J. (2017). The future of B2B marketing theory: A historical and prospective analysis. Industrial Marketing Management, 66, 90-102.
Dardak, R. A. (2015). Transformation of agricultural sector in Malaysia through agricultural policy. Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI), Malaysia, 7.
Gummesson, E. (2017). From relationship marketing to total relationship marketing and beyond. Journal of Services Marketing. 31 (1).16-19.
Haghkhah, A., Rasoolimanesh, S. M., & Asgari, A. A. (2020). Effects Of Customer Value And Service Quality On Customer Loyalty: Mediation Role Of Trust And Commitment In Business-To-Business Context. Management Research and Practice, 12(1), 27-47.
Hilton, J. (2017). Growth patterns and emerging opportunities in nutraceutical and functional food categories: market overview. In Developing new functional food and nutraceutical products (pp. 1-28). Academic Press.
Hoque, A. S. M. M., Awang, Z.. & Salam, S. (2017). The effects of relationship marketing on firm performance: Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Bangladesh. Proceeding in ICBM 2017 - 1st International Conference on Business & Management, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 21-22 September, 2017.
Huda, M., Qodriah, S. L., Rismayadi, B., Hananto, A., Kardiyati, E. N., Ruskam, A., & Nasir, B. M. (2019). Towards Cooperative with Competitive Alliance: Insights into Performance Value in Social Entrepreneurship. in Creating Business Value and Competitive Advantage with Social Entrepreneurship (294-317). IGI Global.
Hunt, S. D., Arnett, D. B., & Madhavaram, S. (2006). The Explanatory Foundations of Relationship Marketing Theory. The Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 21(2), 72–87. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10610420610651296
Hur, W. M., Kim, H., & Kim, H. K. (2018). Does customer engagement in corporate social responsibility initiatives lead to customer citizenship behaviour? The mediating roles of customer?company identification and affective commitment. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 25(6), 1258-1269.
Husnain, M., & Akhtar, M. W. (2015). Impact of Lifestyle on Brand Preferences (Genuine versus Counterfeits Smartphones). Journal of business administration research, 4(2), 30-39.
Jay B. Barney Edward & J. Zajac (1994). Competitive Organizational
Jonathan Barsky and Leonard Nash (2003), Customer Satisfaction: Applying Concepts to Industry-wide Measures. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 43(2), 39-46.
Murali, S., Pugazhendhi, S., & Muralidharan, C. (2016). Modelling and investigating the relationship of after sales service quality with customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty–a case study of home appliances business. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 30, 67-83.
Karanges, E., Johnston, K., Beatson, A., & Lings, I. (2015). The influence of internal communication on employee engagement: A pilot study. Public Relations Review, 41(1), 129-131.
Kotler, P. T. (2019). Marketing management. Pearson UK.
Lovelock, C., & Patterson, P. (2015). Services Marketing. Pearson Australia.
McDonald, M., & Wilson, H. (2016). Marketing Plans: How to prepare them, how to profit from them. John Wiley & Sons.
McKevitt, D., & Davis, P. (2015). How to interact, when and with whom? SMEs and public procurement. Public Money & Management, 35(1), 79-86.
Musah, A. A., Zulkipli, G., & Ahmad, N. S. I. (2017). Relationship between organizational communication and employee satisfaction in temporary work environment: An empirical study of plant turnaround workers. Global Business and Management Research, 9(1), 73.
Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2017). Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Payne, A., & Frow, P. (2017). Relationship marketing: looking backwards towards the future. Journal of services marketing.
Roszkowska-Menkes, M. T. (2018). Integrating strategic CSR and open innovation. Towards a conceptual framework. Social Responsibility Journal.
Seierstad, C., & Kirton, G. (2015). Having it all? Women in high commitment careers and work–life balance in Norway. Gender, Work & Organization, 22(4), 390-404.
Soltani, Z., Zareie, B., Milani, F. S., & Navimipour, N. J. (2018). The impact of the customer relationship management on the organization performance. The Journal of High Technology Management Research, 29(2), 237-246.
Steinhoff, L., Arli, D., Weaven, S., & Kozlenkova, I. V. (2019). Online relationship marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 47(3), 369-393.
Taleghani, M., Gilaninia, S., & Mousavian, S. J. (2011). The role of relationship marketing in customer orientation process in the banking industry with focus on loyalty. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 2 (19), 155-166.
Traina, J. (2018). Is aggregate market power increasing? production trends using financial statements. Production Trends Using Financial Statements (February 8, 2018).
Tukker, A., & Tischner, U. (Eds.). (2017). New business for old Europe: product-service development, competitiveness and sustainability. Routledge.
Williams, P., & Naumann, E. (2011). Customer satisfaction and business performance: A firm-level analysis. Journal of Services Marketing, 25 (1), 20-32. DOI: 10.1108/08876041111107032
Wongsansukcharoen, J., Trimetsoontorn, J., & Fongsuwan, W. (2015). Social CRM, RMO and Business Strategies Affecting Banking Performance Effectiveness in B2B Context. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 30(6), 742–760. doi:10.1108/JBIM-02-2013-0039.
Ying, S., Sindakis, S., Aggarwal, S., Chen, C., & Su, J. (2020). Managing big data in the retail industry of Singapore: Examining the impact on customer satisfaction and organizational performance. European Management Journal.
Yusof, A. (2019). Malaysia's timber and timber-related exports to record RM23b in 2019: New Straits Times. Retrieved July 14, 2020, from
https://www.nst.com.my/business/2019/01/453608/malaysias-timber-and-timber-related-exports-record-rm23b-2019.
Zarei, G., Lalisarabi, A., & Topraghlou, M.J . (2019). Impact of relationship marketing on performance of pharmacies (the mediating role of satisfaction, loyalty, and competitive advantage. Journal of Advanced Pharmacy Education & Research, 9 (S2), 55-62.
In-Text Citation: (Zakaria et al., 2021)
To Cite this Article: Zakaria, Z. Bin, Razali, A. B. Bin, Rashid, K. B. M., & Abdul, S. A. Bin. (2021). The Effect of Relationship Marketing on Company’s Performance: A Case Study of a State- Owned Sawmill Company. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 11(6), 1675–1687.
Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s)
Published by HRMARS (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode