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To investigate the determinants of behavioural brand loyalty amongst dissatisfied customers in the business‐to‐business (B2B) services sector.

A qualitative study was conducted, with 28 personal interviews undertaken with managers who are involved in the choice of service providers. The respondents belonged to 24 organisations located in Australia. Template analysis and eyeballing were techniques used to analyse the data collected.

Assessment of the reasons why dissatisfied customers stayed with the service providers resulted in six categories. The categories were found to be, in order of decreasing frequency, impact of alternative providers, switching costs (18), others (17), inertia (14), investment in relationships (13), and service recovery (13). The results not only confirmed factors found in the literature, but also uncovered 11 other factors.

The sample size, whilst appropriate for qualitative research, should be considered adequate only for exploratory analysis and a further quantitative study is needed to validate the study.

This study is important for those firms who have many prospective switchers because it is important to understand why these customers stay, and to what extent such firms can discourage such customers from leaving in both positive and negative ways. For those service firms that are attempting to attract these prospective switchers, an understanding of why they do not switch is important, as it will enable them to develop strategies to overcome these switching barriers and gain market share.

This research is the first study to investigate in a single model a range of barriers to switching in a B2B services context. The results that confirmed categories found in the literature also discovered 11 other factors not evident in the extant literature.

This study aims at identifying the most critical factors affecting the customer switching behavior for mobile service providers in Jordan. A number of 580 questionnaires distributed to a random sample of Jordanian mobile users. The questionnaire contains 33 items measured on a five‐point likert scale. The data were analyzed using regression analysis. It was found that all the independent variables (pricing, inconvenience, core service failures, service encounter failures, employee responsiveness to service failures, attraction by competitors, changes in technology, switching cost) had a significant effect on switching behavior of mobile service users except change in technology and employee responsiveness to service failure. Recommendations and directions for future research are proposed.

This paper aims to examine the antecedents of customer inertia (i.e. knowledge, confusion, perceptions of competitor similarity and switching costs) and their relationship to customer satisfaction, service providers’ switching intentions and actual switching behavior. Customer inertia is said to reduce the incidence of service provider switching; however, little is known about the antecedent drivers of inertia.

The conceptual model was tested by a longitudinal/discontinuous panel design using an online survey research of 1055 adult (i.e. +18 years old) subscribers to cell phone services. Partial least squares (PLS) path modeling was used to simultaneously estimate both the measurement and structural components of the model to determine the nature of the relationships between the variables.

Findings of the PLS structural model provide support for the direct relationship between customer inertia and its antecedents (i.e. knowledge, confusion, perceptions of competitor similarity and switching costs). The results show that customer inertia has a moderate negative effect on the intention to change service providers but had no measurable effect on the actual behavior of changing service providers, other than indirectly, by influencing the perception of difficulty in switching some 11 months later. Further results from an analysis of indirect pathways of the antecedents to inertia show that switching costs are the only variable which indirectly reduce intentions to change service providers. The results also show that the effect of satisfaction on switching service providers is partially moderated by inertia. Importantly, these relationships are reasonably robust given past switching behavior and contract status of consumers.

The authors find evidence which explains some of the causes of inertia, and show that it has both direct and moderating effects on service provider switching intentions, though not necessarily the behavior of changing service providers. However, support was found for its indirect role through intent as an influence on switching behavior. Importantly, the authors find that inertia has lingering effects, in that it influences the perception of switching difficulties and, hence, behavior up to 11 months in the future.

Managerial implications are that service firms can profit from customer inertia through a reduction in churn. However, high levels of customer inertia over the longer term may increase the level of customer vulnerability to competitor offers and marketing activities, as satisfaction with the provider does not in itself explain switching intentions or behavior.

This study is the first study to contribute to an understanding of the antecedent drivers of customer inertia with respect to service provider switching and to empirically evaluate a variety of antecedent factors that potentially affect switching intentions. Importantly, the long lasting latent effect of inertia in indirectly influencing service switching behavior was found to persist some 11 months later.

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.

This research attempts to understand why – or why not – customers resist switching service providers when a critical incident occurs. The paper examines how service relationship perceptions, such as perceived equity, trust (perceived reliability and benevolence) and relationship commitment (affective and calculative), enhance relationship maintenance and CSR in many critical situations.

A survey was conducted in the financial service industry on a sample of 1,999 consumers (retail banking) and then conceptualized and measured CSR in several critical situations.

The paper demonstrates that perceived equity, perceived reliability, perceived benevolence, affective commitment, and calculative commitment do not influence CSR the same way. CSR mainly depends on the type of critical incident which occurs. For instance, calculative commitment, which is an evaluation of the costs associated with leaving the service provider, enhances CSR in three critical situations (service encounter failures, employee responses to service failures, pricing problems), whereas it leads to relationship disengagement in two other critical situations (inconvenience, changes in the consumer or service provider situation).

This research highlights the need to better take into account the different types of critical incident discussed in the relationship marketing literature and to better consider the complementary roles of perceived equity, trust and relationship commitment in the service switching literature.

This research implies that service companies have to anticipate the critical incidents and to develop specific “shock absorbers” to continue doing business with their current customers.

This research aims to predict private club members’ intentions to switch service providers based on the benefit exchange theory through a structural model with a second-order factor.

This study uses a qualitative procedure to develop a functional, social and psychological model based on the benefit exchange and switching intention literatures. A further quantitative analysis surveyed a sample of 366 private club members and assessed the usefulness of this model.

The results of the confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling indicate that social benefits have a stronger impact on switching intention than loss of functional benefits under the context of a high level of interaction between members and between members and service providers. In addition, they confirm the moderating effects of psychological benefits on the relationship between functional benefits and switching intention.

The findings indicate that members are unlikely to switch if there are positive word of mouth and interpersonal interactions between members and the club (social benefits). Even if they are disappointed with the functional benefits of the club’s products or services, they may still choose to stay with it owing to psychological benefits affecting their decision to switch. The findings offer managerial insights into utilizing relationship marketing activities to strengthen interpersonal relationships, word of mouth, trust, commitment and emotional factors to retain members.

This research confirms that the benefit exchange theory can explain members’ intentions to switch from their current clubs and provides valuable recommendations to managers on retaining their clubs’ members. Because the switching intentions of club members have not previously been adequately studied, this study fills an important gap in the literature.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which telecommunications consumers decide to switch and why.

Results from surveys of consumer switching behaviour in a number of countries are examined to ascertain reasons for actual consumer decision making regarding switching.

Implications for telecommunications regulation are considered. In essence, regulation should require that communications service providers ensure that switching is fast, cheap, predictable and reliable and that consumers are able to switch with minimum difficulty and delay.

The ability and willingness to switch from one to another supplier of telecommunications and internet services are an important aspect in manifesting consumer empowerment. In turn, empowered consumers are important for sustainable competition. If consumers are inert and passive, suppliers will not be under pressure to deliver the potential benefits of competition. And it is empowered assertive consumers, able and willing to switch, who will exert pressure on suppliers to deliver these benefits. Thus, in making well‐informed choices between suppliers, consumers not only benefit from competition but also initiate and sustain it.

Insights from behavioural economics are incorporated in the analysis.

Contractual services are characterized by features such as termination fees, long-term commitment, and complex terms. When customers find better deals from other providers, they may want to switch, but contractual obligations prevent them from doing so. Thus, this study aims to draw upon the stimulus-organism-response paradigm and theories of emotion regulation to examine how punitive switching costs (PSCs) can evoke negative emotions (NEs) from customers and, consequently, lead to negative behavioral responses in contractual service settings.

This study collected data from 395 customers of telecommunications companies, fitness centers, tutoring firms/centers, and house leasing companies in Taiwan. We tested the hypotheses using partial least squares structural equation modeling via SmartPLS 3.0.

The results show that NEs partially mediate the relationship between PSC and customers’ switching intention and negative word-of-mouth. This study also finds alternative attractiveness (AA) and service recovery (SR) do not moderate the PSCs–NEs relationship, but AA does directly influence NEs.

First, this study contributes to the literature on switching costs by exploring how PSC exerts a detrimental impact on behavioral responses. Second, this study adds to the literature on service failures by identifying the mediating role of NEs in such a relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to study the drivers of service provider switching intention other than satisfaction and, additionally, analyse the moderating role of the type of service (utilitarian vs hedonic). Specifically, the authors study the effects of alternative attractiveness, post-purchase regret, anticipated regret and past switching behaviour.

A representative survey with 800 consumers of mobile phone services (utilitarian) and holiday destinations (hedonic) was carried out.

Satisfaction is not a significant antecedent of switching intention in the hedonic service and its effect is marginal in the utilitarian service. In the utilitarian service, the main predictor of switching intention is post-purchase regret, whereas in the hedonic service, the main determinants of switching intention are past switching behaviour and anticipated regret.

The main contribution of this study is the analysis of the determinants of provider switching behaviour that may explain abandonment by satisfied customers, to see if their influence is greater or smaller than that of satisfaction itself, which has been the most analysed variable. Furthermore, there are expected to be differences between utilitarian and hedonic services, an aspect which is also studied in this work.

The purpose of this paper is to go beyond satisfaction as an indicator of customer loyalty and propose a holistic model of service switching in a mobile internet setting. The model, which reflects both barriers and inducements of switching, is developed based on the “mooring” and “pull” concepts in the migration literature.

Focusing on Generation Y mobile internet subscribers, the study analyzed a total of 417 usable questionnaire responses. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the research model.

The results show that first, satisfaction and switching barriers (i.e. a focal firm’s marketing innovation initiatives, switching costs, inertia, and local network effects) are positively related to customer loyalty; second, switching barriers have a stronger influence on customer loyalty compared with satisfaction; third, switching inducements (i.e. competitors’ marketing innovation initiatives, alternative attractiveness, variety-seeking tendencies, and consumers’ susceptibility to social reference group influence) is negatively related to customer loyalty and the relationship is weaker when perceived switching barriers are high.

This study empirically validates multidimensional scales of switching barriers and inducements from a more nuanced perspective, and specifies them as reflective-formative type II models. This study is among the first to use opposing dimensions to measure switching barriers and its counterpart. Hence, it illustrates how the two contrasting mechanisms can coexist in the minds of mobile internet subscribers.