Incorporating Customer Advocacy in the Customer Satisfaction Model

Abstract

There is a significant research on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (Fornell, Johnson, Anderson, Cha and Bryant 1996; Aydin and Ozer 2005). But there is limited research relating the concepts of customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer advocacy. The literature is replete with the satisfaction index studies and their application viz. the ACSI model (Fornell et al. 1996); the European Customer Satisfaction Index (ECSI) model, etc. Ball et al. (2004) states that the explanatory power of these models will increase if both the dimensions of customer loyalty i.e. attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty are considered as the ultimate dependent variables in the satisfaction models. However, Urban (2005) states that the advent of newer technologies like the Internet and the easy access to information has enabled the customers to go for informed purchases. Companies are opting to advocate for the customers to build the long term relationships. Urban (2005) states that companies should represent the best interests of the consumers by becoming advocates for them. According to the author, if a company advocates for the best interests of the consumer, they will reciprocate with trust, loyalty and spread positive word-of-mouth for the company. The author terms this as the customer advocacy strategy. This study has incorporated the customer advocacy paradigm of Urban (2005) because the marketing paradigm is shifting from traditional push-based marketing to relationship marketing to trust-based advocacy marketing. Further based on Urban’s (2005) suggestion this study considers customer advocacy from the company’s perspective i.e. ‘customer advocacy for the customer’ and from the customers’ perspective i.e. ‘customer advocacy for the company’. A comprehensive model relating the antecedents of customer satisfaction, two dimensional customer loyalty and customer advocacy is proposed and tested empirically in this study which can address this gap in the existing literature.