The article presents a model for understanding the role of customers' commitment to service employees and their intention to stay with the firm. The model consists of two kinds of commitment—calculative and affective—to both the service employee and the service firm. The model is tested with a sample of bank customers. The findings support the direct effect of commitment to service employees on commitment to the service firm and the indirect effect on intention to stay.
Recent developments in information technology imply that more service operations can now be transformed from expensive manual operations to low-cost automated self-service. Managers, however, are reluctant to replace personal service with self-service because of the potential negative consequence of self-service on social bonding and subsequent customer loyalty. In this article, the authors argue that the decision should be reframed as follows: “How can self-service be integrated with personal service?”
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