Service Loyalty

Abstract

Marketing academics and practitioners generally agree that customer loyalty is vital to business success. There is less agreement on the factors that determine customer loyalty, particularly in service contexts. Research on the determinants of service loyalty has taken three distinct paths: quality/value/satisfaction, relationship quality, and relational benefits. The authors coalesce these paths to derive a model that links dimensions of customer loyalty (cognitive, affective, intention, and behavioral) with a system of determinants. The model is tested with data from varied services (airlines, banks, beauty salons, hospitals, hotels, mobile telephone) and 3,500 customers in China. Results are consistent across contexts and support a multidimensional view of customer loyalty. Key loyalty determinants are customer satisfaction, commitment, service fairness, service quality, trust, and a construct new to service loyalty models—commercial friendship. The research contributes to the literature by providing a more complete, integrated view of customer loyalty and its determinants in services contexts.

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