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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze how affective commitment to fellow customers influences a customer's affective commitment to the service provider and customer citizenship behavior (CCB). In addition, the paper seeks to examine the moderating role of a customer's calculative commitment to the service organization. Design/methodology/approach – The study used a large-scale survey among customers of a health club and a scenario-based experiment to test the hypotheses. Findings – Both empirical studies provide evidence that affective commitment to fellow customers has positive consequences for the customer-firm-relationship. The findings suggest that commitment to fellow customers and commitment to the service organization influence very specific facets of customer citizenship behavior. In addition, the study found preliminary support for the moderating role of calculative commitment. Affective commitment to fellow customers showed the strongest effect on affective commitment to the provider in customer-firm relationships characterized by high (versus low) calculative commitment. Practical implications – The results of this research have a number of managerial implications. This study suggests measures to strengthen customer-firm-relationships, e.g. generating intensive exchange among customers or attraction of consumer pairs. Providing customers with platforms of valuable relationships to multiplex ties can be a competitive advantage for service providers. Originality/value – This article is the first that highlights the role of other customers as a target of customer commitment and how this commitment affects both the customer's relationship to the service provider and his or her customer citizenship behavior. The present study therefore broadens our knowledge of how bonding among customers influences consumer behavior in service settings.

This article reports the findings of an investigation into the atmosphere in stadiums during live team sports. Experiencing this special atmosphere represents an essential part of the total service provided by the organizers of sport events. However, existing research into the concept of atmosphere focuses on the retail environment. Our first step was therefore to define sport stadium atmosphere as a theoretical construct, drawing on theories from environmental psychology. We then developed a mimic (multiple indicator-multiple cause) model to measure the construct. To specify the mimic model, we generated and selected formative measures by means of a delphi study (N= 20), qualitative expert interviews (N= 44), and an indicator sort task (N= 34). The results indicate that various physical and social aspects of the stadium environment are causal indicators of sport stadium atmosphere. Following this, we conducted phenomenological interviews with spectators at sport events (N= 5) to identify typical affective responses to stadium environment (representing the reflective indicators of the mimic model). These interviews revealed that fans’ experience of stadium environment is characterized by high levels of arousal and pleasure. In addition to our findings, the mimic model developed in this study represents a useful tool for future research into sport stadium atmosphere.

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