Does satisfaction matter more if a multichannel customer is also a multicompany customer?

Abstract

PurposeThis research aims to investigate the moderating influence of both multichannel and multicompany usage on the impact that customer satisfaction has on share of wallet (SOW).Design/methodology/approachThe data used in the analyses were collected as part of both survey and transactional data of 802 households of a large financial services provider. Within class regression models were employed to test the moderating effects of different segments that were identified based on multichannel‐multicompany customer differences.FindingsThe findings confirm that using multiple channels has an overall positive moderating impact on the satisfaction‐SOW link and that customer satisfaction matters more when the customer adopts multiple channels; online channel usage in addition to offline usage. Furthermore, this effect is even more pronounced for customers that transact with multiple providers. That is, the group of customers that use both the company's and competitors' offline and online channels reveal a higher satisfaction‐SOW association than the group of customers that only adopted the offline channel with the company and competitor.Originality/valueThis study broadens the understanding of multichannel behavior by comparing single (offline) and multiple channels (offline and online) for customers of multiple companies (two competitors).