دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی تاثیر ادراک مشتری دیگر بر روابط مصرف کننده - برند - امرالد 2018

Abstract

Purpose – Extant research evidence demonstrates that customer satisfaction in a service encounter is influenced by other customer perception (OCP). However, scholarly research on the impact of OCP on brand love and the moderating influence of customers’ attachment styles in the context of hospitality industry is scarce. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap in the literature. Design/methodology/approach – The data were collected from customers of five and three-star hotels in India. Regression-based process analysis (Hayes, 2013) was used to test the proposed set of hypotheses. Findings – The data analysis shows that OCP predicts brand love through the mediation of satisfaction. Individual’s anxious attachment style positively moderates “other customer perception-satisfaction” relationship, and avoidant attachment style negatively moderates the same relationship. Thus the effect of OCP is positively moderated by anxious attachment style, and negatively moderated by avoidant attachment style. Originality/value – The value of this study lies in quantitatively investigating the roles played by OCP and individual attachment styles in shaping brand love in hospitality industry. In contrast to findings from previous research, the findings from this study suggest that anxious attachment style positively influences brand satisfaction and formation of brand love.

Discussion

Theoretical contributions

Customer’s emotional reaction to service encounters is an area that calls for further research (Brunner-Sperdin et al., 2012). This research responds to this call by investigating the moderated mediation of OCP-satisfaction-emotional brand love relationships by attachment style dimensions in hotel services context. Brocato et al. (2012) invite future research investigating the impact of OCP based on varying individual difference parameters. This aspect is also addressed in this study by analysing the moderating effects of individual attachment style dimensions on OCP-satisfaction-love relationships. Majority of prior research conceptualise that anxiety and avoidance attachment styles are not mutually exclusive (Swaminathan et al., 2009; Mende and Bolton, 2011). This study deviates from this view and examines the distinct roles of anxiety and avoidance in shaping OCP-satisfaction-hotel brand love relationships for the first time in service research domain. As anxiety and avoidance have distinct measurement scales (Mende and Bolton, 2011), it is theoretically valid to conceptualise them distinctively by focussing on their distinct roles. Though prior research investigated the link between customer’s attachment styles and satisfaction (e.g. Swaminathan et al., 2009; Mende and Bolton, 2011), the distinctive roles of individual’s attachment style dimensions in influencing the impact of OCP on brand love has not been examined in the extant literature. Given brand love is an important facet of customer-brand relationship quality (Bergkvist and Bech-Larsen, 2010), the present study fills this neglected area of research.