Relationship maintenance (customer retention and exclusivity) and development (increased service usage and cross-buying) are top priorities in Customer Relationship Management. This paper examines how service companies can effectively influence customer patronage behaviors by leveraging overall customer satisfaction, trust and relationship commitment. Using a longitudinal design over a two-year period, we merge survey metrics with actual patronage behaviors taken from a bank's database. We show that relationship commitment just enhances retention and exclusivity while trust directly influences service usage and cross-buying. As a consequence, trust appears to be highly critical for service relationship development and company profits. Furthermore, trust and relationship commitment mediate the entire impact of satisfaction which appears as a necessary but not sufficient condition for relationship maintenance and development. Satisfaction, and more generally service evaluations, must be efficiently converted into trust and relationship commitment before providing business results. Finally, we establish the temporal antecedence and the predictive power of trust and relationship commitment. Relationship commitment in year t predicts the number of service providers in year t+1 (exclusivity vs. polygamy), while trust in year t predicts the number of bank products (cross-buying) as well as the service usage level in year t+1. We then discuss managerial implications for customer relationship maintenance and development.

Cet article propose une intégration des travaux sur la valeur de consommation et un cadre conceptuel reposant sur la théorie fonctionnelle des attitudes dans lequel nous identifions six composantes de la valeur de consommation (utilitaire, connaissance, stimulation expérientielle, lien social, expression de soi, spirituelle). Par ailleurs, nous proposons un modèle intégrateur expliquant la valeur globale (ratio entre bénéfices et sacrifices) par les composantes de la valeur de consommation. Une application au cinéma en salle nous permet de valider la mesure des six composantes de la valeur de consommation, puis d'étudier leur influence sur la valeur globale. Trois composantes apparaissent dominantes : utilitaire (qualité du son et de l'image), stimulation expérientielle et lien social; elles expliquent 32 % de la variance de la valeur globale. Enfin, nous observons que la satisfaction cumulée se distingue de la valeur globale, en termes de mesure et de champ de significations, la première ayant une nature plus affective que la seconde.

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