Customer satisfaction, loyalty and commitment in service organizations

Purpose – The present study attempts to contribute to the knowledge of how customer satisfaction, loyalty and commitment are defined and relate to each other in the Greek context.Design/methodology/approach – It is based on 200 responses collected from 20 service providers in four service settings: financial services, retailing, entertainment and transportation services.Findings – Both factor‐ and reliability analyses provided satisfactory results. Surprisingly, company satisfaction was not interpreted as a conceptually distinct construct from customer loyalty; a conceptual overlap also emerged between attitudinal loyalty and loyal behavioral actions such as word of mouth; whereas customer commitment was highly positively associated with loyalty (and satisfaction), according to expectations. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to investigate potential moderating effects of gender and service setting on the satisfaction‐commitment and commitment‐loyalty relationships. Although significant differences...

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