Relationship Matters: How Vietnamese Consumers’ Relational Experience Influences Trust and Brand Advocacy

This study investigates how consumers’ relational experience with service providers influences brand trust and brand advocacy intentions. Drawing on relationship marketing and service management literature, we propose that a strong relational customer-brand experience enhances perceived service encounter quality and value for money, which in turn build trust in the brand and ultimately drive consumers’ intentions to recommend the brand to others. The research setting spans two distinct industries in Vietnam—a smartphone service center (Samsung) and a retail supermarket (Lotte Mart)—to examine whether these relational mechanisms hold across contexts. Survey data from Vietnamese customers of both brands supported all five hypothesized relationships. Relational experience significantly boosted customers’ perceptions of service encounter quality and value for money; these perceptions in turn strengthened brand trust, which led to higher intention to recommend (brand advocacy). The findings emphasize the importance of nurturing customer relationships to enhance service evaluations, trust, and positive word-of-mouth. The study contributes to theory by integrating relational and transactional drivers of loyalty in a unified model and demonstrates its generalizability across different service industries. Managerially, the results highlight that investing in relational aspects of the service experience can yield greater customer trust and advocacy, thereby benefitting brands in competitive emerging markets.