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There have been mixed results regarding the impacts of satisfaction, service quality and service value on consumer loyalty. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effects of switching costs between the three antecedents and consumer loyalty via four loyalty dimensions, i.e. repurchase intentions, appreciating behavior, complaining behavior, and price‐increase tolerance.

A conceptual framework is developed where the canonical correlations among the antecedents and components of consumer loyalty are analyzed. Three hypothesis sets are proposed and tested based on 12 service industries in Hong Kong markets.

The findings provide strong evidence of the moderating effects on repurchase preference, but only partial support on the other three loyalty dimensions.

The above findings enable managers to adjust their strategies in response to varying levels of switching costs among services, which affect the relationships between the three primary antecedents and repurchase preference.

Consumer loyalty is considered as an important source of competitive advantages for service firms. Although potential antecedents of loyalty, including satisfaction, service quality and service value, have been identified, their influences on loyalty vary among different service industries. This research highlights the moderating effects of switching costs on the four consumer loyalty dimensions.

Service research typically relates switching costs to customer loyalty, and portrays them as effective switching deterrents that engender harmful word‐of‐mouth (WOM). Rather than to customer loyalty, this paper aims to relate switching costs to consumer inertia, and show that while switching costs may result in customer retention, they can engender positive and negative WOM. This depends on whether the inertia stems from satisfaction or indifference.

A mall‐intercept survey investigated 518 customers' perceptions of their mobile phone service providers. Structural equation modelling fitted the data to the conceptual model.

Switching costs deterred switching and engendered negative WOM, but only with low‐inertia customers. With high‐inertia customers, retention and WOM behaviours depended on whether the inertia stemmed from satisfaction or indifference. Satisfied customers with high switching costs tended to stay, gave more positive and less negative WOM. With indifferent customers, switching costs were unrelated to retention or WOM behaviours.

While they may be perceived negatively, switching costs can engender PWOM. Hence, research should not consider switching costs alone without considering the context that produces them.

Service providers should segment their customers into low‐inertia, high‐inertia/satisfied and high‐inertia/indifferent, and target each segment differently. By converting customers into the high‐inertia/satisfied segment, service providers can make the best use of switching costs – not only in the traditional sense as a barrier to defection, but also as a way of generating positive WOM.

This study is the first to consider the role of inertia with switching costs, positive WOM, and negative WOM. The findings suggest that past studies portraying switching costs as negative impediments that evoke only negative WOM might be misleading.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how customers derive value and switching costs from their own participation conditional on their perceived efficacy of themselves (self-efficacy) and their advisers (adviser-efficacy) in financial services.

Student interviewers approached customers exiting banks with a skip interval of two. The respondents received the questionnaire items translated into Chinese. The final survey sample consists of 220 respondents.

Empirical results confirm that customer participation influences switching costs through customer value. The synergistic effect of self-efficacy and adviser-efficacy moderates the relationships among customer participation, customer value and switching costs. The incongruent levels of self-efficacy and adviser-efficacy can increase customer value and switching costs.

This study looks beyond self-efficacy to demonstrate that the synergistic roles of self-efficacy and adviser-efficacy significantly influence the relationships among customer participation, customer value and switching costs.

Previous research argues that customer switching costs play an important role in the firm’s ability to retain customers and achieve competitive advantage. Research also indicates that in the increasingly networked environment, switching costs are changing in important ways. Despite switching costs’ recognized role in contributing to competitive advantage and its increasingly strategic characteristics in the expanding networked environment, we find a lack of coherence and completeness in the conceptual tools and models developed to understand its role and help effectively to manage the phenomenon. In this paper we attempt to address these needs by expanding and refining the conceptualization of customer switching costs and developing a more useful and comprehensive framework for managers.

The purpose of this paper is to verify the relationship between switching costs and customer loyalty in e‐commerce.

The study conducted an empirical research. A total of 425 online shopping customers were invited from northeastern USA as samples.

The findings show that switching costs positively influence customer loyalty. In addition, perceived risks will affect the relationship of switching costs and customer loyalty. For customers with low perceived risks, switching costs are also positively associated with customer loyalty. However, for customers with high perceived risks, the relationship of switching costs and customer loyalty is weak or negative.

One limitation is that mostly students were selected in the sample. The insights of this study can further validate the previous studies about the relationship of switching costs and customer loyalty, and suggest that perceived risks can be a moderating factor affecting this relationship.

The study suggests that the practitioners should further understand the relationship among switching costs, perceived risks and customer loyalty for their customers.

The paper contributes to the knowledge of perceived risks and how switching costs affect customer loyalty, particularly in e‐commerce.

Stabilizing business in highly competitive and volatile business-to-business (B2B) markets is a strategic imperative for many companies. In such a context, customer retention through the creation of switching barriers (i.e. by increasing switching costs) is a common strategy. The purpose of this paper is to develop a network of relationships among customer switching experience, customer satisfaction, perceived switching costs, and behavioral loyalty intentions.

Survey data were collected from 327 business customers (very small enterprises with fewer than nine employees; customers included physicians, lawyers, tax advisors, consultants, civil engineers, etc.) of an information and communications technology (ICT) company. The research model was tested using partial least square structural equation modeling.

The results show that switching experience negatively influences customer satisfaction and behavioral loyalty intention. Furthermore, the influence of customer satisfaction on behavioral loyalty intentions is partially mediated by financial and relational switching costs.

In saturated markets, companies often try to grow by acquiring customers from competitors. This study reveals that this strategy can backfire. The customers that can be most easily acquired may be those that are the most difficult to retain because customers experienced in switching are difficult to satisfy – and low satisfaction means lower perceived financial and relational switching costs and, in turn, lower loyalty.

This research contributes to theory and practice by shedding further light on the satisfaction-loyalty link by investigating the often widely neglected role of switching experience. Furthermore, the study seeks to add to the discussion of how to specify the role of switching costs: as a mediator or as a moderator.

In responding to competitors' strategic choices, firms must choose whether to allocate their customer relationship management (CRM) resources primarily to retaining existing customers or to acquiring new customers. To address this critical but understudied question, the authors examine the strategic choices of two competing firms between retention- and acquisition-focused strategies in consideration of switching costs, technological advancement level, and market share.

The authors develop and analyze a game-theoretic model to investigate the strategic choices of two competing firms between retention- and acquisition-focused strategies.

When switching costs are high, findings show that when the degree of technological advancement is high (low), both firms should employ acquisition-focused (retention-focused) strategies to maximize their profits. When switching costs are low and there are a low degree of technological advancement and asymmetric market shares, the firms choose retention-focused strategies in equilibrium, but only the firm with the higher market share can maximize its profit. When switching costs are low, technological advancement levels are high, and the market shares are asymmetric, the firm with the higher market share chooses a retention-focused CRM strategy, while the rival with lower market share adopts an acquisition-focused strategy in equilibrium. However, neither firm can maximize its profits.

Prior research focused on a single firm's price discrimination decision without considering a competitor's strategic choice. To address this research gap, the authors examine where firms should assign their CRM resources (retention vs. acquisition) in response to a competitor's CRM strategy. This study provides guidance for optimal decision-making regarding a firm's CRM resource allocation in a duopoly market.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderator effects of switching costs, classified by type (relational, procedural, and financial) and direction (positive and negative), on the relationships between customer-perceived value, trust, and loyalty.

This study reports on quantitative data from a survey of two service contexts which vary in their degree of customer-employee contact and customization. In total, 360 usable questionnaires were collected, and the data were analyzed using multi-group structural equation modeling.

The results demonstrate that switching costs moderate, in different ways, the relationships between customer loyalty, trust and perceived value. Moreover, the strength of the moderator effects vary according to service type.

This study provides new insight into understanding the moderating role of switching costs thus, reduces inconsistencies about the direction and the strength of the moderator effect of switching costs in loyalty frameworks.

This study helps managers choose the most effective loyalty strategy for specific service industries and perceptions of switching costs, and to look beyond their service boundaries in order to cross-fertilize strategies for handling switching costs.

No empirical study to date has simultaneously examined the moderator effect of switching costs classified by type and direction on the relationships between customer-perceived value, trust, and customer loyalty across two different service contexts in a single framework.

In the services marketing literature it has been argued that the concept of service loyalty needs further conceptual and empirical investigation. In this paper a theoretical framework for service loyalty consisting of three dimensions: preference loyalty; price indifference loyalty; and dissatisfaction response is developed. We subsequently focus on the role of service quality and switching costs as antecedents to these types of service loyalty. The results of an empirical study of a large sample of customers from five different service industries provide support for service loyalty as a three‐dimensional construct. Moreover, we find that the influence of service quality on service loyalty varies significantly per industry and that, hence, findings from one industry cannot be generalised to other industries. Furthermore, we establish that in industries characterised by relatively low switching costs, customers will be less loyal as compared to service industries with relatively high switching costs.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test the antecedent, mediating and moderating role of switching costs on the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty.

Competing models are proposed based on previous studies investigating the influence of switching costs on satisfaction and loyalty. A survey was conducted with 7,461 customers of a large Brazilian bank. The four competing models were tested using structural equation modeling technique.

The analysis revealed that: switching cost is a significant antecedent of both attitudinal and behavioral loyalty; the mediating effect of switching cost is stronger in the relationship between satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty; and the moderating effect of switching cost is stronger in the relationship between satisfaction and behavioral loyalty.

This study emphasizes the relevance of the switching cost construct in the banking industry. Customers with different switching costs levels will manifest distinct relationship between satisfaction and behavioral loyalty. Thus, investment on marketing strategies and campaigns should be oriented to better convert switching perceptions into effective loyalty considering its mediating or moderating effects.

Even though there are several different approaches (i.e. direct, mediator and moderator) concerning the effects of switching costs on the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship, there is a lack of integration between these approaches. The paper tests and compares the different roles of switching costs. Another contribution is the inclusion of both attitudinal and behavioral aspects of loyalty, given that the current literature is incipient concerning the role of switching cost when considering the distinct loyalty components.