Business Model Design and Customer Loyalty: The Mediating Role of Customer Citizenship Behavior

Baoliang Hu,Guang Liu,Shuai Yan,Tao Zhang,Wei Huang

doi:10.3390/su12177047

Baoliang Hu, Guang Liu + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su12177047

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Abstract

An increasing number of scholars and practitioners are advocating for the exploration of the demand-side consequences of business model (BM) design from the customer’s perceptual perspective. Consistent with this view, this paper discusses how BM design can achieve customer loyalty through the mediating role of customer citizenship behavior. Therefore, this paper puts forward a series of hypotheses regarding relationships among BM design, customer citizenship behavior, and customer loyalty and further tests these hypotheses through hierarchical regression analysis from data collected from Chinese customers. The results show that both efficiency-centered and novelty-centered BM designs are the antecedents of customer citizenship behavior and customer loyalty. The results also show that efficiency-centered and novelty-centered BM designs can directly affect customer loyalty, and indirectly affect customer loyalty through the mediating role of customer citizenship behavior. Our findings contribute to research on the relationship between BM design and customer loyalty, and research on the demand-side consequences of BM design. Our findings also contribute to research on the link between BM design and marketing, and research on BM design for corporate sustainability. Our findings have management implications for practitioners as well.

Highlights

The environment is becoming more and more dynamic and uncertain, which makes it a strategic task for every enterprise to adapt to the increasingly turbulent environment and achieve sustained performance
This paper focuses on the influence of business model (BM) design on customer loyalty, as customer loyalty results in positive enterprise performance [25,26], the establishment of imitation barriers, and the increase of customer stickiness [27,28], facilitating corporate sustainability
Efficiency-centered BM design, novelty-centered BM design, customer citizenship behavior, and customer loyalty were combined in an exploratory factor analysis

Summary

Introduction

The environment is becoming more and more dynamic and uncertain, which makes it a strategic task for every enterprise to adapt to the increasingly turbulent environment and achieve sustained performance. Appropriate business model (BM) design is considered to be essential for enterprises to cope with environmental challenges and achieve sustained performance [1,2,3], because it orchestrates and connects possibly interlinked boundary-spanning activity systems and organizational configurations [4,5]. It is generally advocated that BM design should be implemented through a series of value activities and heterogeneous resources within an enterprise, from which its effect on enterprise performance can be obtained [9,10,11]. Brettel et al show that efficiency-centered BM design improves enterprise performance while Migol et al show that it does not [12,13]; Zott and Amit argue that novelty-centered BM design improves enterprise performance while Balboni et al argue that it does not [4,14]

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