The role of marketing in retail banking sector continues to change in the ever-changing dynamic environment. The prime focus of bank marketing was on public returns in yester years. Later the attention has shifted to advertising and sales promotion. Customer satisfaction and customer retention have become focal points in today’s bank activities. Therefore, it is quite evident that there is a paradigm shift in marketing in banks which was shaped well over the past few decades. In the era of technology, banks are striving hard to sustain and get success in a highly intensified competitive market. Banks are formulating innovative marketing practices to tap niches in this competitive market. These practices lead to socio-economic transformation in long run. Thus, there is every need to develop a clear marketing strategy that creates long term relationship with customers since customer retention matters always than that of customer attrition.  Hence, a modest attempt is made in this paper to elevate the paradigm shift from transactional marketing to relationship marketing in Indian banking sector and a conceptual model is developed to show the impact of relationship marketing strategies on customer satisfaction through the mediating role of customer empowerment.

    Keywords:  Bank marketing, customer satisfaction, relationship marketing, transactional marketing.