Customer relationship programs have been increasingly developed by service providing companies. In the conception of such programs, almost always the companies are the ones to decide with whom they want to relate with, and which characteristics the relationship shall have. Based on a survey and by means of multidimensional scaling, the present study investigates if consumers perceive their relationships with the companies in the same way, even when they provide different kinds of service, and how the services characteristics may be related to the perceptions of relationships attributes. The results identify the way some services may be aggregated according to the characteristics consumers identify in the relationship established between the company and the consumer. Considering that, service companies may try to group their consumers based not only on their characteristics, but also on the way they understand and/or expect the relationship to be.
Relationship marketing; company-consumer relationship; services marketing; multidimensional scaling; perception
