Defensive strategies for managing satisfaction and loyalty in the service industry

Abstract

The investment model is used to predict customer responses to defensive value‐added and value‐recovery strategies. The two strategies were manipulated under different competitive environments with airline services scenarios in a controlled experiment. Hypotheses were affirmed as value‐added and value‐recovery strategies influenced customer satisfaction and loyalty with varying sensitivities to the competitive environment and different mechanisms consistent with prediction derived from the investment model. Regardless of value‐added strategy and competitive environment, value‐recovery strategy strongly and positively influenced customer satisfaction, situational loyalty, and enduring loyalty. Value‐added strategy also had a positive effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty, but these effects emerged primarily when a value‐recovery strategy was already present, and under conditions of less intense competition. Satisfaction was found to mediate strategic effects on loyalty, with more pronounced effects observed for value‐recovery strategy and situational loyalty. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Relationship quality as a predictor of B2B customer loyalty

“…In consumer marketing, consistent evidence explains satisfaction's contribution to repurchase intentions, behavioral intentions, customer retention and customer loyalty (e.g., Anderson and Sullivan, 1993;Bearden and Teel, 1983;Bitner, 1992;Bloemer and Ruyter, 1998;Bloemer and Kasper, 1995;Boulding et al, 1993;Burton et al, 2003;Dube and Maute, 1998;Ennew and Binks, 1999;Oliver, 1999;Ruyter and Bloemer, 1999;LaBarbera and Mazursky, 1983;Patterson, 1995;Selnes, 1993;Yu and Dean, 2001). In the context of marketing channels, Geyskens and Steenkamp (2000) empirically find that loyalty is the result of economic satisfaction, and a channel member's evaluation of the economic outcomes that flow from the relationship with its partner such as volume, margins and discount.…”

Influencing factors on restaurant customers’ revisit intention: The roles of emotions and switching barriers

“…These studies with a multi-dimensional view verified the emotion-satisfaction relationship in greater detail than simple positive and negative emotions. This multi-dimensional approach to emotion in the satisfaction process enables precise assessment of complex emotional experiences in various consumption situations (Dube and Maute, 1998;Han and Back, 2007;Westbrook and Oliver, 1991) and helps us further understand the role of various types of consumption emotions in satisfaction formation, particularly in the context of service consumption (Dube and Menon, 2000). The diversity and complex nature of the consumption experience in illustrating satisfaction formation cannot be adequately assessed by combining emotions into separate positive and negative summary factors (Westbrook and Oliver, 1991).…”

“…While the two-dimensional approach to explaining customer satisfaction and subsequent behaviors has predominated in marketing literature, mainly using the positive and negative subsets of basic emotions in the Izard (1977) typology (e.g., Westbrook, 1987), the multiple dimensions of emotions have rarely been used to explain customer behaviors. In this study, a multiple-component perspective of emotions was included to precisely assess more complex emotional experiences in restaurant consumption situations (Dube and Maute, 1998;Westbrook and Oliver, 1991). Second, to understand the satisfaction and revisit intention relationship better, additional insight into the link was provided by examining the moderating effects of switching barriers on this relationship.…”

Passenger perceptions of service quality: Korean and Australian case studies

“…Value-added services are ways in which companies can gain competitive advantages in the airline industry (Dennett et al, 2000). For example, strategies such as frequent flyer programs increase the longterm value of the relationship with the airline, offering greater benefits to repeat passengers than to occasional users (Dube and Maute, 1998).…”