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Developing and maintaining high-quality relationships with customers is an essential part of the marketing function for many luxury restaurants. Accordingly, researchers have identified a number of drivers of relationship quality in the domain of restaurant patronage. However, while there has been much research concerning the antecedents of relationship quality, a central question remains: What is it about relationship marketing that leads to better quality relationships? The purpose of this research is to answer this question by investigating the role of gratitude in the development of high-quality relationships in the luxury restaurant marketplace. To these ends, a conceptual framework of these relationships is proposed and empirically tested using a sample of restaurant consumers in the USA. The results indicate that gratitude plays an important role in relationship marketing in the luxury restaurant industry.
Jin et al. (Wed,) studied this question.