Wearing community: why customers purchase a service firm's logo products
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to investigate customer purchase of a service organization's logo/branded merchandise as a type of customer voluntary performance behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
The article employs three separate studies; two are conducted with customers of Curves, the world's largest fitness franchise, and the other is conducted at a weight‐lifting gym. Two empirical studies test a proposed mediation model using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping techniques. The third study represents a humanistic inquiry that elucidates the social influences that encourage a customer to purchase a service firm's logo products.
Findings
The results show that a customer's integration into a service‐based community encourages him or her to purchase the firm's logo merchandise. In addition, a customer's ability to identify with the firm mediates this relationship. The immersion of customers' self‐ and social identities in a firm emerges as a critical factor to enhancing their appreciation of the firm by purchasing financially lucrative logo consumables.
Research limitations/implications
The article theoretically links customer voluntary performance with a customer's integration into a service community (ISC), organizational identification, and pooled associations. Because the concept of ISC is newly coined in this article, researchers are encouraged to develop the concept both empirically and theoretically.
Practical implications
Service and retail managers should understand that a key to selling organizational logo/branded merchandise is to encourage customers to form in‐house social relationships with other customers and employees.
Originality/value
The article demonstrates that service‐based customer communities are often lucrative for service firms. Customers may demonstrate their appreciation for commercially based friendships by purchasing and displaying the host organization's logo products.
Keywords
Citation
Rosenbaum, M.S. and Martin, D. (2012), "Wearing community: why customers purchase a service firm's logo products", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 310-321. https://doi.org/10.1108/08876041211245209
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited