The role of psychological contract violation in shaping spurious loyalty
Marketing Intelligence & Planning
ISSN: 0263-4503
Article publication date: 4 May 2021
Issue publication date: 4 August 2021
Abstract
Purpose
This study explores the impact of brand's psychological contract violation on customers' spurious loyalty, via the mediating effects of customers' brand commitments (affective commitment, calculative commitment and normative commitment) and the moderating effects of justification for violation and nostalgia proneness in the link of psychological contract violation and three commitments.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on 427 valid responses collected from paper- and web-based survey questionnaires, a total of 21 hypotheses were tested by adopting a structural equation model, hierarchical regression technique and slope analyses.
Findings
The result indicates negative effects of psychological contract violation on customers' attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty via affective commitment and normative commitment, as well as positive effects of psychological contract violation on customers' attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty via calculative commitment. It explains the reason why some loyal customers show spurious loyalty after being psychological contract violated. Meanwhile, it also supports different moderating impacts of justification for violation and nostalgia proneness in these relationships.
Originality/value
This study underscores the importance of calculative commitment in mitigating the adverse effect of psychological contract violation on customers' loyalty. Also, managerial implications are put forward to prevent loyal customers from switching to a worse loyalty stage after being violated.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research is sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 72072064 and 71672068.
Citation
Zhang, Y. and Zhang, J. (2021), "The role of psychological contract violation in shaping spurious loyalty", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 39 No. 6, pp. 792-808. https://doi.org/10.1108/MIP-01-2021-0008
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited