Content area
Full Text
Ko de Ruyter: Maastricht University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Maastricht, The Netherlands and
Josee Bloemer: Limburg University Centre, Department of Applied Economics, Universitaire Campus, Belgium
Introduction
Customer loyalty in service industries has received considerable attention in both marketing and management theory and practice. As customer loyalty may act as a barrier to customer switching behaviour it has an impact on the development of a sustainable competitive edge, (Keaveney, 1995; Gremler and Brown, 1996). During past decades, customer satisfaction has frequently been advanced to account for customer loyalty (Newman and Werbel, 1973; Oliver and Linda, 1981; LaBarbera and Mazursky, 1983; Bearden and Teel, 1983; Bitner, 1990; Fornell, 1992; Anderson and Fornell, 1994; Dick and Basu, 1994; Oliver, 1996). Here, an implicit theme is that positive evaluations on the basis of expectancy disconfirmation of service providers will instigate customers to favour them with their patronage. However, the direct relationship between customer evaluations of services and loyalty has remained somewhat equivocal. For instance, Bloemer and Kasper (1995) demonstrate that the satisfaction-loyalty relationship is not simple and straightforward as the level of elaboration on the part of the customer may act as a moderator between satisfaction and loyalty. Furthermore, Oliva et al. (1992) argue that the relationship between service satisfaction and loyalty is non-linear, meaning that in case satisfaction increases above a certain level, customer loyalty will increase rapidly. However, it is also shown that loyalty remains unaffected over a relatively large range of satisfaction levels that fall below that certain level. In this paper, we investigate how two factors may have a complementary impact on customer loyalty in relation to varying levels of customer satisfaction; (1) value attainment and (2) positive mood. Previous research in the context of work experience and turnover intentions (George, 1991; Judge, 1993; George and Jones, 1996) suggests that simultaneously considering value attainment, job satisfaction and moods results in a better understanding of the phenomenological experience of work and its consequences for employee loyalty towards the organisation. Based on the work of Heskett et al. (1994) who propose that job satisfaction and customer satisfaction are closely related, we attempt to test the model of George and Jones (1996) from a mirror image perspective, i.e. we focus on the role of value attainment...