Unlocking the “Black Box”:How Personal Loyalty Transfers to Firm Loyalty
This study reveals the important psychological mechanisms by which a customer’s loyalty to a specific salesperson (personal loyalty) can transfer over to loyalty to the firm.Many scholars and managers have raised concerns that personal loyalty can be threatening to firm loyalty.However,drawing on a broad body of knowledge on marketing,psychology and organizational behavior,we demonstrate that personal loyalty can work positively and cooperatively toward firm loyalty.Specially,we identify and examine three concurrent underlying mechanisms: affective,cognitive and behavioral mediation.Moreover,we explain how the loyalty transfer process can be strengthened by salespersons’ brand-building behaviors.We tested our theoretical model in the context of the Chinese direct selling industry.Our findings advance multilevel loyalty research and offer suggestions for incorporating this knowledge into managerial strategies and practice.
Customer loyalty transfer Affect transfer Social influence Perceived entitativity Behavioral sensemaking Brand-building behavior
GuoCai Wang XiaoYan Wang XiFeng Wang YanHui Zhao
Department of Marketing,Business School,Nanjing University,China Economics and Management School,Nanjing University of Technology,China Michigan State University,USA
国内会议
北京
英文
1-33
2013-08-16（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）