Does “true” personal or service loyalty last? A longitudinal study

Purpose – The paper aims to use Dick and Basu's two‐dimensional matrix that identifies four types of customer loyalty: true, spurious, latent and non‐loyal. It seeks to investigate if these four distinct clusters of loyalty existed both in terms of loyalty to the individual service worker (personal loyalty) and loyalty to the firm (service loyalty). The paper also aims to examine the stability of the loyalty clusters.Design/methodology/approach – Using self‐completion mail questionnaires, females over 18 who frequently used the service were surveyed at two time periods, 18 months apart. Of the original 341 respondents at time 1, only 137 (40 per cent) of these successfully completed the questionnaire at time 2.Findings – Even though the service context is such that the customer has the freedom of choice in selecting the service, the four loyalty clusters were found for both personal loyalty and service loyalty. Those customers who were originally classified as “true” loyals were the most stable group. Per...

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