Abstract
Recently concepts from attachment theory are being applied to business situations. In this paper we focus on how relationship specific (RS) versus general (G) attachment styles affect the willingness-to-recommend (WtR) by customers. Such WtR refers to the likelihood of customers to recommend the services of their service provider to other customers, based on their experiences with the provider. This WtR is often measured by means of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) which is assumed to be a reliable (credible) market signal as it originates from customers themselves and not from the firm. This study provides insights in this issue using data from 798 members of an online panel from the Netherlands, covering four service industries. Customers are surveyed on their RS and G attachment styles, trust in, satisfaction with, and commitment to their service provider, as well as their WtR this provider. Findings emerge from econometric parallel mediation analyses. This study shows that customers’ RS but not the G attachment styles bias their appraisal of trust in, satisfaction with and commitment to the service provider, which in turn affects their WtR. More specifically, across the four service industries, customers scoring higher on RS anxiety and/or avoidance show systematically lower levels of trust in and satisfaction with, and commitment to the firm, ultimately leading to lower WtR. Firms should especially target those customers that score higher on RS avoidance (possibly in combination with higher levels of RS anxiety) as their WtR is strongly biased which might create uncertainty for other customers about the firm’s reputation.
Highlights
In a decade where customers show lower trust in service providers (Accenture, 2016), customers in their quest for relevant information about the trustworthiness and service quality of the service provider study what a service provider herself communicates but, more importantly, customers devote ever more attention to the word-of-mouth activities of other customers about the service provider
The customer relationship process model we proposed, besides including the indirect effect of the RS attachment style dimensions anxiety and avoidance on WtR through relationship dimensions, allowed for direct effects of both RS attachment style dimensions on WtR
While originally framed as the only metric one should know and use (Reichheld, 2003), more and more research has shown that it does not perform better than other metrics (e.g., Keiningham et al, 2007a,b)
Summary
In a decade where customers show lower trust in service providers (Accenture, 2016), customers in their quest for relevant information about the trustworthiness and service quality of the service provider study what a service provider herself communicates but, more importantly, customers devote ever more attention to the word-of-mouth activities of other customers about the service provider. We rather seek to make finer psychological dimensions when customers appraise and develop relationships with firms; we distinguish between trust in, satisfaction with, and commitment to the firm These dimensions are conceived as independent dimensions, ranging from quality/performance to relationship dimensions, and allow us to better understand how RS versus G attachment styles relate to these dimensions. To the best of our knowledge this approach, which combines (a) comparing RS to G attachment styles measures and (b) unbundling the relationship concept in sub-dimensions, has not been implemented in a marketing context Such context, provides a powerful environment to foster insights on this issue, as customers provide a final appraisal of the performance of the service firm, and develop relationships with the firm. Because of the heterogeneity of the just mentioned attachment targets, whether these attachment styles operate invariably across a wide range of relational contexts they function as a trait (G attachment styles) or whether they vary across different contexts (RS attachment styles) and show low to modest correlations among each other (Overall et al, 2003; Klohnen et al, 2005; Fraley et al, 2011) is a general point of discussion
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