Modeling relationship strength across service types in an Eastern culture

Abstract

This study examines for the first time, antecedents of relationship commitment in service industries in an Eastern cultural context. The study investigates the reasons for customers engaging in long-term relational exchanges with service firms, as well as the impact of attractive alternatives and switching costs on such relationships. The sample comprised respondents in Bangkok, Thailand, who each completed a series of five questionnaires over a period of two weeks pertaining to their relational behaviour (technical service performance, social bonds and communication) with five predesignated service types. The results indicate that collectivist cultural norms impact the nature of relationships, and that antecedent variables have significantly different impacts across service types. Furthermore, switching costs were identified, which act as powerful inducements to stay in a service relationship. Management implications for relational strategies and future research implications of the findings are discussed.

Relationship Bonds and Customer Loyalty: A Study Across Different Service Contexts

“…Also, when comparing a hairdresser to a medical service, this bond is still more important for the former than the later (mean difference = 0.567). These results were expectable, since there are more opportunities to create social and emotional bonds in experience and credence services (such as hairdressers and physicians), where there is a high degree of interpersonal contact [33], rather than in search services such as cable TV operator, where the customer does not have to interact a lot with the service provider in order to evaluate the outcome of the transaction. Services with a high degree of interaction with the customer are based mostly on the personal and customized relations between the client and the provider [45] and offer higher levels of familiarity and trust [46].…”

“…Rather they possess different structural characteristics such as degree of customization; high versus low face-to-face contact; search, credence or experience properties; membership versus non-membership type relationship; role of the customer in service 'production' and so on [33]. In different service contexts, different types of relationship bonds may emerge, given differences in the nature and the value customers derive from the different service types [7].…”

“…According to [35], there are more opportunities to create social, confidence and emotional bonds in experience and credence services rather than in search services, where the customer does not have to interact a lot with the service provider in order to evaluate the outcome of the transaction [33]. Also, due to customers being more aware of their expectations even before service delivery, economic bonds and switching costs are expected to play a more important role on search than experience and credence services.…”

“…Services with a high degree of interaction with the customer are based mostly on the personal and customized relations between the client and the provider [45] and offer higher levels of familiarity and trust [46]. Also, in experience services, customers tend to use information about the service encounter and human contact (social bond), while credence services are mainly based on technical knowledge and reputation, rather than social features, and may not qualify for a friendship-type relationship [33,34].…”

“…Surprisingly, although search services are the easiest to evaluate prior to purchase, the cable TV operator also exhibits high switching costs. One possible reason is that Cable TV operators tend to have a membership relationship with its customer base and are thus more likely to have contractual switching barriers [33].…”