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The paper uses an ongoing business-to-business (B2B) relationship perspective to establish the interrelationships between trust, commitment, and relationship satisfaction (as relational constructs) and specific assets, formalization, and opportunism (as transaction cost variables) from a buyer's perspective, framed within micro-enterprises in the business banking industry in South Africa. Data were collected via self-administered online questionnaires from 381 micro-enterprise customers of one of South Africa's major banks. We first used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess the measurement model before structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to estimate the hypothesized relationships between the study constructs. The measurement and structural models fitted the data well. The research was approached using the dual theoretical lenses of relationship marketing and transaction cost theory to investigate relationship satisfaction from a buyer's perspective. The results support the notion that, in a B2B context, relationship satisfaction is an outcome of trust and commitment, with commitment being the stronger predictor. Relationship satisfaction, in turn, was positively related to both specific assets and formalization (the relationship with formalization being the strongest), and a negative relationship between relationship satisfaction and opportunism. Since our results found commitment to be a stronger predictor of relationship satisfaction than trust (contrary to much previous research that found the opposite to be true), the paper concludes with several commitment-related suggestions for banks. Although much research exists on trust, commitment, and satisfaction, to our knowledge this study is the first using dual theoretical lenses (relationship marketing and transaction cost theory) to investigate relationship satisfaction from a buyer's perspective among micro-enterprise customers in a banking context. The insights gained from our study therefore not only address this under-researched area (micro-enterprises), but also contribute toward expanding our understanding of forming (and maintaining) banking relationships with the customers of the smallest-sized businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business success is determined by the ability to establish stable relationships that result in the retention of loyal customers. Extant literature on business-tobusiness relationships highlights trust, satisfaction, cooperation, and coordination, regarded as important constructs comprising relationship quality (RQ), as key drivers for ensuring loyalty. However, the interaction between these RQ constructs remain unclear. This study accordingly investigates a framework where trust and economic satisfaction are antecedents of cooperation and coordination, which ultimately influence small business customers' loyalty towards their banks. The sample comprised 269 small businesses operating in South Africa. The empirical findings of this study show that trust and economic satisfaction within banking relationships are significant predictors of cooperation and coordination, which in turn positively influences small business customers' loyalty towards their banks. This study contributes to existing literature by incorporating a small business banking perspective investigating the interrelatedness of selected constructs on establishing stable relationship and customer loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]