Retaining consumers is more profitable for a firm than recruiting new ones. The practice of relationship marketing attempts to establish relationships with consumers in order to better understand their needs and encourage repeat patronage. Retailers may use several tactics in order to form relationships with consumers, including frequent buyer or loyalty cards, coupons, rebates, social clubs and events, and mailing lists. However, customers may choose not to participate in any relationship building tactic employed by retailers, even when those consumers are otherwise satisfied with the product or service delivery. The purpose of this study was to identify why seemingly satisfied consumers refuse relationships with retailers.

Through focus groups and in-depth interviews, consumers were asked why they did not participate in relationship building activities across a wide variety of businesses including casino and hotel resorts, local and national restaurants, bookstores, clothing stores, grocery stores, airlines, etc. Common themes emerged across various industries regarding why consumers avoid relationship marketing tactics. All themes in this framework involved either a perceived effort or a perceived loss on the part of the consumer. These themes are as follows:

· Upkeep themes reflect the work or effort that consumers feel they have to put forth in order to maintain relationships with retailers, such as continually updating contact information in retailer databases, carrying around loyalty and company credit cards for frequent buyer programs, trying to remember to use these cards at the time of purchase, and trying to sort through the constant barrage of solicitations from retailers’ mailings and emailings. Retailers can alleviate consumers’ sense of upkeep burden through a few simple changes. For example, letting consumers specify how many communications they want to receive from a company a month/year will reduce the number of solicitations consumers have to sort through. Additionally, allowing consumers to choose an easily remembered pin number/password as opposed to one assigned by the retailer may reduce the perception of the effort required to keep the relationship.

· Time themes represent situations where consumers feel the time required on their part is too great to make forming a relationship worthwhile. Examples include the time to fill out initiation paperwork (which is necessary for many relationship marketing programs), the time it takes to accumulate promised benefits in relationship marketing programs, or the time required to travel to these retailers. Credit card companies have alleviated time issues for consumers by sending credit cards to pre-approved consumers rather than requiring consumers to fill out the initial application. Retailers can follow this lead by making the initiation process as efficient as possible, as well as making sure that the time required to obtain promised benefits is reasonable in the consumer’s eye.

· Benefit themes reflect consumers’ beliefs that the benefits offered through relationship marketing tactics are in some way disingenuous, unenticing, or consumers may not know what benefits are being offered. For example, retailers offering rebates to their consumers were often seen as disingenuous because the rebates were too difficult to redeem. Consumers also felt that retailer rewards for frequent patronage were undesirable in many cases and not worth the time or effort to acquire them. Retailers can address benefit issues by conducting focus groups to learn how their customers perceive the rewards offerings. Rewards that are seen as unenticing, too difficult to redeem, or disingenuous in some way should be altered.

· Personal loss themes reflect a sense of loss of something private or internal to the consumer. For example, consumers may sense a loss of privacy when a retailer has access to their personal information or they may feel a loss of self-dignity when affiliated with a retailer that their peer group would not approve of. In order to combat these feelings, retailers can make anonymous mailings an option, as well as provide explanations to consumers of how personal information will be used.

These themes provide insights into what barriers organizations face when trying to establish relationships with their consumers. Only through an understanding of the factors that hinder relationship development can retailers negate consumers’ feelings of effort and loss associated with relational programs. It is extremely important that both parties perceive benefits in relationship marketing programs. Without addressing consumer concerns about relationship building, retailers will have great difficulty in establishing true, mutually profitable, and long-term relationships with consumers.