KOREASCHOLAR

One of the main priorities for many service companies is the development and maintenance of long term relationship with valuable customers. A common research route is the hourglass approach where general hypotheses are developed, then they are tested on a single type of service and finally the findings are taken as generalised across the whole spectrum of services. It is well recognised that customer relationships are multi-sided and contingent to the nature of the services, but still the empirical research on the moderating role of service types is limited. Additionally, the actual bonds that tie the service provider to the customer, have received limited attention by the scholars. Thus, this paper attempts to address the issue of relevance and relative importance of the different types of relational bonds between hedonic and utilitarian services. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) together with longitudinal qualitative research was used to develop a set of hypotheses that was empirically tested in a large sample of consumers. The basic premise of TPB is that attitudes together with subjective norms and perceived control can predict intentions, and actual behaviours. However, TPB has been criticised that it does not incorporate a full set of attitudinal drivers towards intentions. Responding to this criticism, this study developed (through qualitative research and literature review) an extensive set of relational bonds found to be important in different service contexts. These bonds are: switching costs, economic, social, confidence, convenience, emotional and habit bonds. Together with subjective norms and perceived difficulty, relational bonds were examined in relation to repurchase intentions across hedonic and utilitarian services, based on a survey (sample size: 548), through multi-group analysis and structural equation modelling. Based on the results, the drivers of repurchase intentions can be classified into three categories: 1) universal drivers of repurchase intentions that transcend service categories (emotional, subjective norms and perceived difficulty) 2) service specific bonds (confidence, convenience, and habitual bonds) and 3) inconsequential relational bonds (switching cost, economic bonds and social bonds). Explanations of these differences lie in the nature and the value customers derive for the two different types of services. Initial findings suggest that many of the generally accepted theoretical relations in this field are service context specific. This is the first attempt to get a relational bonding footprint of different types of services in an effort to develop granular theories that take into account the nature and context of service typologies. From a managerial perspective findings qualify general theories of customer relationship management and make them more usable for the specific contexts of services.

• Anastasia Stathopoulou(Birkbeck, University of London)
• George Balabanis(Cass Business School, City University London)