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In this article the authors suggest that a major change in business orientation — the adoption of the logistics concept — is about to occur.

In the past decade or so, workplace organisation and restructuring processes, have been subjected to the most intense scrutiny. Driven by rapidly intensifying competitive pressures, work organisations sought increased flexibility, especially from labour, as they struggled to maintain market shares in an economic environment increasingly characterised by excess in labour supply. Pressures for change were probably most evident in the public sector where economic and ideological forces combined to limit the growth of government services and increase their exposure to competitive forces.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customers’ upgrading/downgrading _(t−1) behavior may be predictive of future spending. Further, this paper also investigates how customers’ post-consumption evaluations of upgrades and downgrades [satisfaction_(t−1) and perceived value_(t−1)] may moderate the relationship between upgrades/downgrades and future spending.

The predictions are tested using a large longitudinal data set of river cruise purchases (N = 48,103) and largely replicated using a data set of zoo membership purchases (N = 2,469).

Satisfaction_(t−1) mitigates the positive relationship between prior upgrades_(t−1) and future spending_(t). In contrast, perceived value_(t−1) magnifies the positive relationship between prior upgrades_(t−1) and future spending_(t). However, no positively moderating effects are observed to alleviate the negative relationship between prior downgrades_(t−1) and future spending_(t).

This research suggests that managers should work hard early in customer–firm relationships because of an asymmetric difficultly in altering the trajectory of an established relationship. Specifically, relationships that are trending downward (as consecutive downgrades would suggest) are difficult to repair – a mechanism to alter this trajectory is not observed. In contrast, relationships that are trending upward (as consecutive upgrades would suggest) can be improved with high perceived value evaluations but also degraded with high satisfaction evaluations.

This research should recast marketers’ understanding of the value of customers’ upgrade and downgrade decisions. Instead of using customers’ upgrade or downgrade decisions as the dependent variable, or final outcome in buyer behavior, this study shows how the accumulation of prior upgrades and prior downgrades, over time, acts as a bellwether of the customer–firm relationship. Further, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to connect these upgrade/downgrade decisions to customers’ evaluations of those purchases to understand how individual purchases can impact the overall customer–firm relationship.