Service Customer Commitment and Response

Introduction

Customer commitment has garnered much interest since Morgan and Hunt’s (1994) seminal work on the trust- commitment theory of relationship marketing. Recent research has identified that customer commitment is a powerful predictor of various metrics related to customer retention, like switching/staying intentions and repurchase intentions (Bansal et al., 2004; Fullerton, 2003; Venetis and Ghauri, 2004). Most authors and practitioners agree that building and enhancing long-term relationships with customers generates positive returns to firms (Reichheld, 1993, 1996), thus a better understanding of customer relationship properties like commitment is a key to marketing success. This may be especially important for services as opposed to consumer goods because of the difficulty of evaluating intangible services, the fact that many

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Journal of Services Marketing 24/1 (2010) 16–28 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0887-6045] [DOI 10.1108/08876041011017862]

services require ongoing membership, and the relational nature of many services (e.g. Gwinner et al., 1998).

A multi-dimensional view of commitment has been well established in the services marketing literature. The number of dimensions used, however, has only been moderately consistent. Many studies have alluded to two dimensions of commitment in marketing relationships:

1 Affective commitment, based upon feelings of identification, loyalty, and affiliation.

2 Continuance (or calculative) commitment, based upon anticipated switching costs (e.g. Gilliland and Bello, 2002; Harrison-Walker, 2001; Verhoef et al., 2002).

More recent studies (e.g. Bansal et al., 2004; Gruen et al., 2000) have used a three-dimensional model originating from the organizational behavior literature that also includes normative commitment; commitment based upon feelings of reciprocity or obligation.

In addition...