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The purpose of this study is to investigate whether a U-shaped relationship exists between the length of time a donor has been a regular member in a nonprofit organization and the amount donated over time. In addition, this research analyzes whether this relationship is moderated by donation frequency.

Using a database of 6,137 members from a collaborating nonprofit organization, a longitudinal study is conducted over an eight-year period (2013–2020). A set of ordinary least square (OLS) regression analyses are carried out to empirically test the proposed hypotheses.

This study finds a nonlinear, U-shaped relationship between donation amount and relationship length. This effect can be explained through the dynamic evolution of two dimensions of commitment: affective (decreasing over time) and normative (increasing over time). The results also reveal that these effects, however, become flatter for members who engage in more frequent donations.

The results provide novel insights revealing the nonlinear nature of the relationship between the length of time a donor has been a member of a nonprofit organization and the amount donated, and underscores the moderating role of donation frequency, which makes the U-shaped relationship flatter, thus increasing the amounts donated. Despite their relevance in the service ecosystem, nonprofits have been under-represented in prior work. This study offers important practical insights into the effective management of the regular donor portfolio.

This study aims to examine how customers derive satisfaction and affective commitment from their participation in financial services, which is conditional on their relationship length.

Student interviewers approached customers who were exiting banks at two skip intervals in Taiwan. The final survey sample consists of 227 respondents.

Empirical results confirm that optimal customer participation (CP) influences affective commitment through increased customer satisfaction. The optimal level of CP with customer satisfaction and affective commitment is high if the relationship length is long.

This article shows that the marginal benefits of CP on customer satisfaction and affective commitment become negative after an optimum level. Furthermore, relationship length moderates the aforementioned relationships.

The objective of this study is to examine the effect of corporate image, perceived value, and switching costs on customer loyalty in customer/provider relationships of different length.

Five key constructs, namely: corporate image, perceived value, switching costs, customer loyalty, and length of relationship, were employed. Using a systematic sampling technique, student interviewers randomly approached customers exiting hair salons. The final survey sample consisted of 279 respondents.

This paper supports a contingency model with regard to customer loyalty and its antecedents. The results suggest that corporate image impacts customer loyalty in both newer and older relationships. Whereas in newer relationships, corporate image has a cardinal influence on switching costs, in more‐established relationships switching costs are influenced primarily by perceived value. In both cases, switching costs influence customer loyalty.

As extant research claims that relationship quality, and not length, moderates the relationship between loyalty/repurchase behavior and their antecedents, future research could adopt relationship quality as a moderator to test the model of the present study.

The results support the importance of enhancing corporate image to retain newer customers. In longer‐established relationships, corporate image remains a determinant of repurchase decisions. However, customer value also has a significant influence on switching costs and loyalty.

The current study moves beyond customer‐perceived value, switching costs, and corporate image to demonstrate that relationship length has a significant influence on customer loyalty.

While several publications exist on the topic of job satisfaction, little is known about personal correlates of overall job satisfaction. This paper reviews the literature on single and multiple studies concerned about the relationships between age, gender, rank and length of service and job satisfaction. Collecting a large sample from UK universities, the paper finds that the rank of an individual and the length of service he/she has worked within higher education are significant predictors of the level of the individual's overall job satisfaction. However, while academic rank is positively and very strongly correlated with the overall job satisfaction, length of service in higher education is negatively related. In addition, while gender, age and length of service in present universities are not significantly associated directly with the overall job satisfaction, several of the interactive relationships of the variables, such as rank and gender or length of service in higher education and age, are statistically significant. The implications of the results are discussed as well as suggestions are given for further research.

While scholarly attention has mainly focused on team-level or relational constructs for the success of team performance, understanding the inter-play between these two streams of research remains limited in digital transformation projects. Borrowing from social exchange theory, this study aims to explore the antecedents of team alignment leading to team performance with mediation effects of trust, commitment and customer–service provider relationship. The moderating role of relationship length was also examined.

Data was collected using a survey of 180 employees working on digital projects in B2B context, mostly in the Indo-Pacific region, specifically Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and India. Partial least squares method with multi-group analyses and bootstrapping method were used to analyze the data.

Findings show that customer control and team capability are the strongest antecedents of team alignment, and inter-play between the customer–provider relationship with team-level constructs is also significant. Relationship length has higher level of moderation impact on trust–team performance link compared to commitment–team performance relationship.

The study considers moderation impact of relationship length on trust, commitment and team performance but not other constructs. Also, gender ratio is skewed in the data set.

Digital transformation practitioners need to be aware of relational constructs (not only team-level constructs) when designing successful long-term digitalization strategies for organizations.

This study is one of the first to document the inter-play between team alignment and relational constructs (such as trust, commitment, and customer–service provider relationship), with moderation impact of relationship length leading to team performance in digital transformation projects.

Building on Stimulus-Organism-Response theory, the current study examines the influence of pickup service quality in buy-online pickup in-store service (BOPIS) on users' perceived relationship investment with the mediating role of users' perceived experience quality and relationship proneness. This research also demonstrates the subsequent impact of BOPIS users' perceived relationship investment on their relationship performance indicators, like their cross-buying behaviors (breadth), frequency of their purchase (depth) and longevity of their relationship (length) with the store. The moderating role of BOPIS users' service experience consciousness in a few proposed relationships was tested.

The research is descriptive, quantitative and cross-sectional investigation. The study employed a purposive sampling technique. It was conducted using data collected using a validated self-administered questionnaire from 786 Indian omnichannel shoppers who have used BOPIS services in the past. The proposed conceptual model was tested using Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling.

The results indicate that BOPIS users' perceived experience quality and relationship proneness positively mediate pickup service quality and perceived relationship investment. The users' perceived relationship investment subsequently significantly positively impacts different dimensions of their relationship performance with the store (breadth, depth and length). Additionally, BOPIS users' service experience consciousness has a significant negative moderating effect on the direct relationship between pickup service quality and different dimensions of relationship performance.

The study is conducted in the Indian population, where omnichannel retailing is still nascent.

This study addresses the need to investigate the relationship performance indicators of BOPIS users, like their cross-buying behaviors(breadth), frequency of their purchase(depth) and longevity of their relationship(length) with the store. This study is the first to show that pickup service quality might explain the relationship performance of BOPIS users through their perceived experience quality, relationship proneness and relationship investments. The moderating role of BOPIS users' service experience consciousness in a few proposed relationships was also tested for the first time.

Trust is a key factor in the establishment of long‐term relationships between service representatives and their customers. Prior research has documented that both “person‐related” (e.g. empathy, politeness and customer/service representative similarity) and “offer‐related” (customization, competence, reliability and promptness) service representative characteristics have an impact on trust. However, the relative importance of these characteristics, and in some cases the direction of their relationships with trust, has varied across studies. In this paper, we posit a contingency model of trust, suggesting that the effects of the above variables on trust are moderated by length of the customer/service provider relationship. Our model is tested in a business‐to‐business context by means of a mail survey involving 677 small business owners. The small business owners provided data about their relationships with their insurance industry service providers. Our results demonstrate how service representatives and firms can work toward the establishment of trust with their clients under varying market conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to extend brand identification theory to the sports team context by testing the direct and indirect effects of a sports team’s personality, sports fans’ identification with the team, and the effect of the length of fans’ relationship with a team on their loyalty to it.

The authors conducted a quantitative study among ice hockey fans of one Finnish hockey team before play-off games. Data came from an online questionnaire generating 1,166 responses.

The authors find that: first, identification with a team mediates the effects of brand personality on attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty; second, brand personality is a stronger driver of identification among newer fans; and third, brand personality has a stronger influence on both attitudinal and behavioral loyalty among newer fans. These findings stress the importance of sports brand’s personality in driving fans’ identification with the team and their loyalty to it.

The study develops and tests a new conceptual model on consumer loyalty in the sports team context. The authors shed light on how sports team personality affects its fans’ identification with the team and the formation of fan loyalty, from the perspective of fans’ relationship length.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether preference toward in‐group members can serve as opportunism governance in channel relationships in a collectivist culture. This study proposes a model of opportunism incorporating in‐group preference and trust as antecedents of opportunism. Based on Transaction Cost Economics and Social Exchange Theory, transaction‐specific investment and relationship length are employed in the model as confounding variables of in‐group preference for opportunism and trust.

Data were collected from 109 Korean department store buyers and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (EQS 6.0).

The results showed that buyers' in‐group preference increased buyers' trust toward suppliers and decreased suppliers' opportunistic behavior. Buyers' increased trust toward suppliers was found to reduce suppliers' opportunistic behavior. Further, Trust was significantly influenced by supplier TSI, but not by length of relationship. On the other hand, opportunism was significantly influenced by length of relationship, but not by supplier TSI.

This study examined only the positive side of in‐group membership. Some criticisms of in‐group preference are favoritism, interference with fair competition, and collective blindness, any of which might decrease the efficiency of business operations. These impacts should be examined to gain a balanced view of the implications of in‐group preference in business settings.

Multinational companies should understand that in‐group membership is an important source of building trust and oppressing opportunism in the Korean market. Multinational companies can strategically approach in‐group members of business partners to become members of those in‐groups.

This is the first empirical study to examine collectivists' tendencies toward in‐group preference as opportunism governance.

This study aims to examine the moderating effects of gender, income, age, customer involvement and length of the relationship on the customer satisfaction (CS)‐customer loyalty (CL) relationship in a contractual service context. CL is assessed using customer repurchase intention (RI) and repurchase behavior (RB).

Using a postal mail survey, the authors measure the CS, RI involvement and socio‐demographic characteristics of customers who use a credit card. RB is measured by the number of transactions and the corresponding amount spent by clients, based on data provided by the company. The proposed hypotheses are tested using random sampling and hierarchical regressions.

The significant moderators are different depending on the CL measure used. When RI is utilized, the gender and age of the client have a positive effect on the CS‐CL relationship. However, when RB is assessed using the number of transactions made by the credit card's owner, the length of the relationship becomes the significant moderator.

The study is limited to a single firm, from one industry sector, but provides future researchers a multitude of replication opportunities.

Demographic and relational variables are important in explaining the CS‐CL relationship. Customer relationship strategies have positive results. RB is preferred to RI when evaluating and explaining CL.

The assessment of customer and relational characteristics as moderating variables in the CS‐CL relationship, and comparing different measures of CL in a contractual service adds value to this research.