| Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools. |
Customer Relationship Dynamics: Service Quality and Customer Loyalty in the Context of Varying Levels of Customer Expertise and Switching CostsUniversity of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Brock University, Canada
University of Melbourne, Australia As customer-organization relationships deepen, consumers increase their expertise in the firm’s product line and industry and develop increased switching costs. This study investigates the effects of customer investment expertise and perceived switching costs on the relationships between technical and functional service quality and customer loyalty. Technical service quality is hypothesized to be a more important determinant of customer loyalty than functional service quality as expertise increases. Both technical and functional service quality are hypothesized to have a reduced relationship with customer loyalty as perceived switching costs increase. Three-way interactions between the main effects of service quality, customer expertise, and perceived switching costs yield additional insight into the change in relative importance of technical and functional service quality in customers’decision to be loyal. Six of eight hypotheses receive support. Implications are discussed for customer relationship management over the relationship life cycle.
Key Words: service quality • loyalty • customer expertise • switching costs
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 33, No. 2,
169-183 (2005) This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
 |
|
Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
