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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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of three different dimensions of switching costs on customer dissatisfaction response styles as well as on the evaluation of service recovery.

Study 1 is a scenario-based experiment and Study 2 uses a critical incident technique combined with survey-based measures of switching costs, dissatisfaction responses and perceived complaint handling.

The results of these studies highlight the need to consider the different effects of switching costs. Not only do different switching costs lead to varying customer dissatisfaction responses, they also have differential moderator effects on the interrelationships between customer-perceived recovery justice and service recovery satisfaction.

Service failure severity was an influential control variable. Future studies should investigate how the type, context and severity of service failure influence customers’ complaint behavior. Furthermore, participants had trouble differentiating between their relations toward their service provider in general and one particular employee. Hence, further research should explore the relationship between customers and frontline employees.

The authors encourage managers to take a closer look at the switching cost dimensions of their service industry. This may lead practitioners to promote differentiated strategies for complaint stimulation and complaint handling.

This is the first study to simultaneously explore all three dimensions of switching costs when examining their impact on customers’ dissatisfaction response styles as well as the moderating effects in the recovery process. In doing so, this study reveals some hitherto uncovered effects.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to link customer satisfaction, switching intentions, perceived switching costs, and perceived alternative attractiveness in the context of the Bangladeshi mobile telecommunications market (MTM). In addition, this study develops three key formative determinants of customer satisfaction: financial factor, technological factor, and customer service factor.

A model is developed and tested using PLS-SEM with a sample size of 442 respondents. The three key formative determinants of customer satisfaction were developed using a panel of five industry experts.

Financial, technological, and customer service factors were found to have significant positive effects on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction and perceived switching costs were found to have a significant direct effect on switching intentions, and perceived switching costs and perceived alternative attractiveness were found to have significant moderating effects on switching intentions through customer satisfaction. However, no significant direct effect of perceived alternative attractiveness on switching intentions was found.

This is the first study to link customer satisfaction, switching intentions, perceived switching costs, and perceived alternative attractiveness using structural equation modeling in the context of the Bangladeshi MTM. In addition, three key formative determinants of customer satisfaction are developed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of front line employee job satisfaction in customers ' behavioral intentions.

Research design is nested with data collected from both first line employees and customers. Data are collected from multiple branches of a single bank to eliminate the possibility of other parameters such as design of operations and physical evidence from masking the true effects of the variables under investigation.

Employee job satisfaction influences a customer ' s perception of quality, customer satisfaction and the development of high relational switching cost. Hence the effect on repurchase intention is indirect but significant and strong while moderated by branch size and age of the employee.

The degree of employee job satisfaction is a resource of strategic nature for these companies aiming to improve customer retention rates. Such companies should protect their ability to build employee job satisfaction and restrain themselves from policies that threaten to slim down the satisfaction their employees derive from their job.

Using a hierarchical research design, this is the first study that manages to establish the relationship between employee job satisfaction and customers ' behavioral intentions while eliminating the effect of complementary marketing mix parameters such as operations design effectiveness and aesthetics.

Multiple adoption (the adoption of another auction site in addition to the present one) enables startup or non-leading firms to survive and grow by eroding the customer bases of market leaders. Thus understanding multiple adoption is important. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose and examines antecedents of user intention to adopt another online auction site.

This study utilized a cross-sectional design and an online survey, obtaining 495 valid responses.

Analytical results indicate that self-efficacy and inherent novelty seeking contribute to the intention to adopt another auction site. Moreover, transaction opportunities enhance the intention. Perceived network externality also increases the intention. However, perceived relational switching costs reduce such intention.

This study is new in investigating why users intend to use another auction site and identifying the antecedents.

In recent years, marketers have adopted new technologies to engage customers and better meet customer needs throughout the customer journey. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of consumer engagement on satisfaction and behavior-based CRM performance generated by mobile instant messaging (MIM) services. The objective is to verify which aspects of consumer engagement generate satisfaction and optimize customer relationship management.

Data were made available for analysis from an online survey on customers who had been contacted or had contacted an organization by means of MIM. Based on literature analysis, relations between customer engagement dimensions, satisfaction and behavior-based CRM performance were studied by using structural equation modeling.

The cognitive engagement dimension and the emotional engagement dimension affect the level of satisfaction, but only the emotional engagement dimension has an effect on the behavior-based CRM performance, while social engagement does not affect satisfaction and CRM performance. Moreover, this study confirms the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer behavior-based relationship performance.

MIM used as support to the relationship with customers contributes to generating customer satisfaction and increases the value of service performance revealing it an excellent marketing tool in support of the customer journey.

This research extends our understanding of customer engagement in the ambit of the instant messaging application used for business that so far has not been investigated. This work shows how instant messaging can be a valid instrument for customer relationship management in optimizing the benefits deriving from the adoption of disruptive innovations.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework, which identifies intrinsic, social and extrinsic gratification factors as essential individual factors influencing users’ disclosure of personal information via mobile instant messaging (MIM) applications (apps). In addition, the author has examined whether gender affects those different factors of gratification.

Data are collected via paper-based survey from university students who use MIM in the United Arab Emirates. Structural equation modeling is used to test the hypotheses that are presented in the model.

The findings show that intrinsic gratifications (entertainment and escapism) and social gratifications (social interaction) have positive effects on the depth and breadth of self-disclosure via MIM apps. Additionally, women’s self-disclosure of personal information is positively affected by social influence, while men are not influenced by this type of gratification.

The study aims to enhance the current understanding of the limited research on the uses and gratifications approach within the context of MIM apps to identify the gratifications that motivate MIM apps users to disclose personal information.

The purpose of this study is to examine the concept of customer value and its role in building switching costs perceptions. The current research develops scales and empirically validates a typology of customer value for business services.

Through an extensive literature review, qualitative interviews, and an empirical investigation, the current study identifies three facets of customer value for business services (i.e. economic value, relational value, and core value) and investigates their relationships with buyers' perceptions of switching costs. Structural equation modeling techniques were used to evaluate a measurement model and structural relationships.

The findings show that economic value and the value obtained from relational and support aspects of a service exert strong positive impact on customers' perceptions of switching costs and thus serve as barriers to exit. Although core service does not seem to have positive impact on switching costs, core value maybe a “hygiene” factor that may promote customers' switching if not properly managed.

The results of this study are generated from a single industry; additional studies in other industries may strengthen the generalizability of the proposed constructs and framework.

Business suppliers need to build exit barriers through co‐creating relational value. Through communications, suppliers may be able to monitor customers' desired value as a proactive action to anticipate changes and to influence positive changes in customer value.

The current study sheds some light on how supplier firms can enhance switching costs, and consequently raise exit barriers by better managing various aspects of customer value perceptions.

This study aims to develop and test a theoretical model postulating that a hotel customer’s brand attachment is reinforced by positive and negative switching barriers, which, in turn, determine customer citizenship behaviour (CCB) towards hotel brands.

Surveys were conducted and completed by 233 respondents in the USA who had favourite hotel brands and used these brands in the previous year. A framework was developed based on the literature, and eight hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling.

The findings suggest that a customer’s brand attachment (brand-self connection and brand prominence) to a hotel is strengthened not only by relational benefits (positive switching barriers) but also by switching costs (negative switching barriers). Brand prominence can promote CCB, whereas the impact of brand-self connection on CCB is rather limited.

This study highlights the importance of affirmative and passive reasons for customers to remain in a relationship with the hotel brand and how sub-dimensions of switching barriers are interrelated to predict a customer’s attitude and behaviour to the brand. By emphasising the role of customers’ hotel brand attachment, this study also ascertains that cognitive and affective bonds towards a hotel brand can be significant antecedents to their extra-role behaviours.

This research contributes to the hospitality literature by expanding the realm of consumer behaviour research on switching barriers, brand attachment and CCB.