Channel Habits and the Development of Successful Customer-Firm Relationships in Services

Abstract

Technology advances have profoundly changed the way customers and service organizations interact, leading to a multitude of service channels. This study investigates consumer habits toward service channels in order to understand the influence of these channel habits on perceptions and intentions (perceived switching costs and attitudinal loyalty) and on consumer behavior (service usage and cross-buy). We empirically test the framework in the financial services industry, and the results reveal that physical store habit increases perceived switching costs and that acquired habits toward the physical store and self-service kiosks have a positive influence on attitudinal loyalty. Perceived switching costs positively affect service usage, and attitudinal loyalty positively influences cross-buy. In addition, habits in each channel lead to an increase in the number of services acquired (cross-buy), but online and self-service kiosks channel habits negatively impact service usage, as the lack of physical presence may increase customer uncertainty. Because habits are built on the frequency and stability of channel usage, firms can manage habits by encouraging frequent interactions under stable contexts. In addition, firms should stimulate customer habits toward the physical store as it is central to the promotion of loyalty and for increasing service usage.

Key themes in consumer financial services research from 2000 to 2020: a bibliometric and science mapping analysis

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Loyal customers’ tipping points of spending for services: a reciprocity perspective

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Does the Label Fit the Channel? How “Bricks” and “Clicks” Influence Demand for Environmental and Social Sustainability Labels

“…sustainable alternatives offers a novel perspective, as previous literature has focused primarily on in-store consumer behavior (Bezawada and Pauwels 2013;van Doorn and Verhoef 2015;Mai, Hoffmann, and Balderjahn 2021) or has found differences in laboratory experiments (Luchs et al 2010;Peloza, White, and Shang 2013). The results suggest that consumer behavior differs by shopping channel, highlighting the need to better understand sustainable consumption as a function of the shopping situation but also providing additional insights to the growing literature on differences in consumer behavior across service channels (Cambra-Fierro et al 2020). Third, we add to the previous literature that also relies on fit to promote sustainable consumption (Bodur, Gao, and Grohmann 2014;Reczek, Trudel, and White 2018;White and Peloza 2009), by providing empirical evidence based on actual purchases using behavioral data.…”