Intercultural Interaction And Relationship Selling In The Banking Industry | Halimin Herjanto & Sanjaya S. Gaur

World migration has changed demographic characteristics across nations. According to World Migration Report 2010, which is published by International Organisation for Migration in Switzerland, the number of migrants has grown to 214 million by 2010 and the figure is expected to rise to 405 million by 2050. Correspondingly, firms are increasingly relying on the ethnic market as a new market frontier. In recognition of this new trend, this article attempts to show how buyers’ national characteristics impact salespersons’ attempts to develop and maintain long term healthy relationships with buyers particularly in the context of banking industry. This paper integrates the extant literature in three domains: relationship selling, the banking industry and intercultural interaction to propose a model of Intercultural Interaction and Relationship Selling in the Banking Industry. An important implication of our model is that it generated a number of testable research propositions. From a theoretical standpoint, this new framework facilitates a better understanding of how buyers’ national characteristics impact salespersons’ attempts to develop and maintain long term seller-buyer relationships. Managerially, the framework offers some guideposts to formulate better relationship selling strategies for bank customers in multicultural environments.