The role of psychological contract violation in shaping spurious loyalty

Abstract

Purpose

This study explores the impact of brand's psychological contract violation on customers' spurious loyalty, via the mediating effects of customers' brand commitments (affective commitment, calculative commitment and normative commitment) and the moderating effects of justification for violation and nostalgia proneness in the link of psychological contract violation and three commitments.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on 427 valid responses collected from paper- and web-based survey questionnaires, a total of 21 hypotheses were tested by adopting a structural equation model, hierarchical regression technique and slope analyses.

Findings

The result indicates negative effects of psychological contract violation on customers' attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty via affective commitment and normative commitment, as well as positive effects of psychological contract violation on customers' attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty via calculative commitment. It explains the reason why some loyal customers show spurious loyalty after being psychological contract violated. Meanwhile, it also supports different moderating impacts of justification for violation and nostalgia proneness in these relationships.

Originality/value

This study underscores the importance of calculative commitment in mitigating the adverse effect of psychological contract violation on customers' loyalty. Also, managerial implications are put forward to prevent loyal customers from switching to a worse loyalty stage after being violated.

Citation

Zhang, Y. and Zhang, J. (2021), "The role of psychological contract violation in shaping spurious loyalty", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 39 No. 6, pp. 792-808. https://doi.org/10.1108/MIP-01-2021-0008