Creating commitment and loyalty behavior among retailers: what are the roles of service quality and satisfaction?

Abstract

As a result of weakening brand image/loyalty, little differentiation, and intense price competition, manufacturers are now increasingly pressed to ensure retailers' shelf space and/or salesperson attention. This research contributes to the literature by empirically examining an underrepresented body of literature in the B2B contextretailer loyalty. Specifically, this study fills a gap by investigating retailer evaluations of the technical and relational dimensions of a manufacturer's order fulfillment service quality as predictors of retailer satisfaction, affective versus calculative commitment, and ultimately loyalty behavior. Results suggest that both technical and relational order fulfillment service quality influence satisfaction, which in turn positively affects both affective and calculative commitment. By separating the affective and calculative dimensions, loyalty behavior is associated directly only with affective commitment. Further examination reveals that relational order fulfillment service quality has a direct impact on affective commitment. When the sample was split based on "share of wallet," results suggest that satisfaction impacts both affective and calculative commitment, regardless of "share of wallet." For "high share" retailers, the positive relationship of calculative to affective commitment creates an indirect route (through affective commitment) by which calculative commitment affects behavioral loyalty.

Featuring the e-service quality of online website from a varied perspective

“…Figure 4 and Table 10 show that, H7 and H8 are empirically proven but H9 is not supported. (a) H7: The testing result is consistent with the research results of Cater and Zabkar [9] and Davis-Sramek et al [14]: When consumers have a higher affective commitment with the shopping website, the loyalty intention towards the shopping website significantly increases. (b) H8: The testing result is consistent with the research results of Fullerton [23,24] and Lee et al [38]: When consumers have a higher affective commitment with the shopping website, the advocacy intention towards the shopping website significantly increases.…”

“…As for affective commitment and loyalty behavior with retailers in e-commerce environment, Davis-Sramek et al [14] suggested that there is a positive causal relationship between affective commitment and loyalty behavior. Fullerton [23] study of the impact of customers' commitment towards relationship marketing discovered that, affective commitment has a positive effect on advocacy intention.…”

The Mediating Effect of Patient Satisfaction in the Patients' Perceptions of Healthcare Quality – Patient Trust Relationship

“…Research has shown that good service quality leads to the retention of existing customers and the attraction of new ones, reduced costs, an enhanced corporate image, positive word-of-mouth recommendation, and, ultimately, enhanced profitability (Berry et al, 1989;Reichheld and Sasser, 1990;Rust and Zahorik, 1993;Cronin et al, 2000;Kang and James, 2004;Yoon and Suh, 2004).Moreover, securing and increasing loyalty is central to many corporate strategies because obtaining new customers is costly and customer retention is connected to long-term profitability (Anderson and Mittal, 2000;Bruhn and Grund, 2000;Reichheld 1996;Davis-Sramek et al, 2009).Therefore Service quality can be used as a strategic differentiation weapon to build a distinctive advantage which competitors would find difficult to copy and many service sector organizations have begun to see service quality as a potential source of sustainable competitive advantage (Lim and Tang, 2000;Kuei, 1998). The analysis of service quality would enable management to better direct financial resources to improve hospital operations in those areas that have the most impact on customer perceptions of service quality.…”

Efficiency evaluation of customer satisfaction index in e-banking using the fuzzy data envelopment analysis

“…Customer loyalty: Customer loyalty has been defined as a deeply held commitment to rebuy or repatronize a preferred product/ service consistently in the future (Davis-Sramek et al, 2009). Cyr et al (2008) defined e-loyalty, meaning online loyalty, as perceived intention to visit or use web sites and to consider purchasing from them now and later.…”