How Attitudes Translate to Loyalty: An Integrative Model in Service Relationship Marketing

Abstract

Enhancing customer loyalty is the ultimate goal of relationship marketing. While prior studies have highlighted the significance of hedonic and utilitarian attitudes as key drivers of consumer behavioral loyalty, literature, especially in the service context has left ambiguities regarding: (1) integrative exploration of mechanisms mediating attitudes’ impact on behavioral loyalty; and (2) the specific components and connections between attitudinal and behavioral loyalty, along with their origins. This study introduces a novel integrative model that delves into the distinct effects of hedonic and utilitarian attitudes on components of attitudinal and behavioral loyalty, shedding more light on understanding the interplay between these components, their relationships, and their functional connections with trust and attitudes. Structural Equation Modeling was applied to the survey results from 1,028 participants, with the results demonstrating how hedonic and utilitarian attitudes differently impact various components of behavioral loyalty through mediation of trust and attitudinal loyalty components. Furthermore, results show that relationships varied across different services. The findings will help service firms to identify important predicting factors and channels of service behavioral loyalty, thus enabling them to optimize the costs of customer-service relationship management.