Paper info

Antecedents of Customer Relationship Termination

Jens Geersbro and Thomas Ritter

The paper was published at the 26th IMP-conference in Budapest, Hungary in 2010.

To end business relationships, or to more actively terminate relationships, has long been
acknowledged as part of customer relationship management. However, compared to other
elements such as initiation and maintenance of relationships, little is known about the
termination of business relationships as a managerial task. This paper contributes by (1)
developing a conceptualization of relationship termination competence and (2) analyzing its
antecedents. The empirical results identify termination acceptance, definition non-customers,
organizational relationship termination routines, and motivation as significant antecedents.
Because of this, managers need to develop their organizations in order to use relationship
termination as a vital strategy.