The Impact of Macroeconomic Events on Marketing Relationships

This paper addresses one issue that has been somewhat neglected in the marketing literature. Namely, whether basic marketing relationships at the establishment level are robust to major changes in the macroeconomic environment where they operate. What allows us to address this issue is a combination of two factors: passage of a law liberalizing retail gas prices in Spain and the availability of a survey of gas stations in Pamplona focusing on customer satisfaction and future patronage intentions prior to the passage of the law. By conducting a similar survey in 2007 we were able to ascertain the extent to which the main determinants of these two important marketing outcome variables were robust to the macroeconomic changes of the intervening years. While the main attributes or distribution services determining customer satisfaction were inter-temporally stable, customer perceptions of store price levels were not. In the case of future patronage intentions, only customer satisfaction was an inter-temporally stable determinant of the relationship. Important customer characteristics and objective characteristics of the establishments had different effects on future patronage intentions before and after the price liberalization.