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This study aims to broaden understanding of customer helping behaviour in the banking environment and provide strategic direction for much-needed further research regarding its role and management within the customer service journey.

Gift-giving literature was further explored to identify plausible characteristics of customer helping behaviour in the banking environment.

Customers’ acts of helping could be complex in nature and may involve multiple actors, including customer helpers, gatekeepers, and other members of customer helpers’ networks. Moreover, customer helpers and their helping networks may operate in both offline and online environments, in various stages of the service experiences, and ultimately in the customer journeys. Furthermore, the help customers provide to other customers could be framed by socially constructed arrangements that seem to be (1) dynamic in nature, (2) comprising of joint efforts by multiple actors, and (3) within diverse and interlinked helping environments. Accordingly, several research implications for the banking environment are identified.

Key to services in the banking environment may be the complex and synthesised helping systems among customers that evidently could affect product adoption, use, and customer loyalty of customers receiving help throughout the service experiences and customer journeys. Accordingly, guided by gift-giving literature, the current paper sets the research agenda.

Marketing literature has made little progress on the connection between service quality and customer citizenship advocacy, helping and feedback sub-dimensions that may promote competitiveness. It is also unclear to what extent service quality may serve as an underlying motivation for explaining the relationship between affective commitment (a primary antecedent of customer citizenship) and the selected sub-dimensions. Consequently, the aim of the current research is to develop a customer citizenship behaviour model and address these matters in a peer-to-peer service context.

Survey data were collected from 610 customers of a ride-hailing peer-to-peer service brand. Data analysis included structural equation modelling and bootstrapping.

Affective commitment influences service quality. Service quality motivates customer citizenship behaviours directed towards the ride-hailing brand (feedback) and other customers (advocacy and helping). Service quality provides an indirect path for connecting affective commitment with the customer citizenship behaviours in varying degrees.

This study is the first to verify the relevance of all three customer citizenship behaviours in a single model as influenced by service quality. The current research is further a step forward in understanding the mediating role of service quality and its potential to ensure customers' feelings of attachment towards the brand are translated in citizenship actions. The findings are noteworthy, considering the varying service levels generally experienced in a peer-to-peer service environment. Peer-to-peer service brands may fall back on their emotional connection with customers to influence service judgements and ultimately benefit from customer citizenship behaviours.

This study aims to examine customer helping and advocacy behaviours within dyadic financial service relationships involving customers and fellow customer helpers.

The gift-giving literature was used to propose a customer-to-customer interaction model, which was tested and cross-validated among electronic banking customers in South Africa (n = 404) and Australia (n = 244). Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to respondents who are users of electronic banking services and who previously received help with the service from a fellow customer. Data analysis included multi-group structural equation modelling.

The findings support the view that selected source credibility dimensions may influence greater affective commitment towards fellow customer helpers at various levels. Subsequently, further altruistic gift-giving in the form of customer helping and advocacy behaviours may result from higher levels of affective commitment. Feeling secure in their relationships with fellow customer helpers, customer recipients of help are likely to further socialise other customers who may share a common interest in the service category (e.g. electronic banking), but do not necessarily support the financial service provider of the customer.

The findings extend the conceptual domain of affective commitment and shed light on the factors contributing to the development of strengthened bonds between customers and fellow customer helpers within dyadic financial service relationships. Additionally, greater financial service socialisation and use may be achieved when the helping and advocacy behaviours of customer helpers are not restricted to a specific service provider. Subsequently, the current investigation advances knowledge of the underlying processes involved in motivating these desired service outcomes and behaviours.

In the absence of direct employee involvement, customers sharing knowledge and know-how with other customers during self-service encounters is key for promoting service quality. This study assessed the extent to which customer support and help during self-service encounters could simply be explained by multiple motivations of the social exchange theory.

A survey approach was followed. The model was tested among 258 electronic banking customers in South Africa and later cross-validated among 253 electronic banking customers in Australia. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis with country as the grouping variable, latent variable modelling and indirect tests were performed to assess interrelationships among diverse factors that may contribute to customer support and help during self-service encounters, as accounted for by motivations of the social exchange theory.

Adequate model fit was obtained for the combined structural model, which was based on the invariant model. Value contribution and competence affirmation, pleasure derived from helping, reciprocity and reputation enhancement are relevant motivations of the social exchange theory that may impact customer support and help through knowledge sharing.

The study provides a simplified and more cohesive explanation of customers' motivations for engaging in customer support and helping behaviours during self-service encounters.

Service providers seeking guidance on knowledge sharing among customers, which may lead to greater service quality, should benefit from this research.

The findings contribute to greater understanding of social exchanges by customers who provide support and help to other customers during self-service encounters, and that ultimately may affect service quality.

Customers’ proactive helping behaviours involving personal initiative taking may present an effective solution for assisting other customers in avoiding harmful brands. Accordingly, this study aims to propose a model explaining the role of positive psychological capital (self-efficacy and optimism) in influencing customers’ proactive helping behaviours involving personal initiative taking. The study additionally provides greater clarity regarding the moderating effect of emotional self-control within the suggested model.

Survey data were collected from 256 respondents in South Africa, who reported on their perceptions and the degree to which they engage in proactive helping behaviours to assist other customers in avoiding harmful brands. Hypotheses were tested using regression analysis.

General self-efficacy and social optimism influence customers’ proactive helping behaviours. Emotional self-control moderates the indirect effect of general self-efficacy on customers’ proactive helping behaviours through social optimism.

Greater insight is obtained into the interplay between factors representing a positive psychological state and self-control of negative emotions and these factors’ effect on customers’ proactive helping behaviours involving personal initiative taking.

The research extends knowledge of proactive helping behaviours involving personal initiative taking to assist other customers in avoiding harmful brands and subsequently provides a baseline for further research in this regards. Practically, the research is useful to social agents of society concerned with promoting responsible purchasing practices.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the mediating effect of customer engagement on the relationships between selected relationship quality and value antecedents (commitment, customer satisfaction, trust and customer value), and the consequence (loyalty intentions) within the short-term insurance industry.

A descriptive research design that is quantitative in nature was followed and 491 responses from insurance customers were analysed.

Short-term insurers should facilitate customer engagement by implementing strategies that foster customer commitment, ensure customer satisfaction, build trust and create customer value. Facilitating customer engagement may lead to stronger loyalty intentions amongst customers towards the short-term insurer.

The investigation offers a greater understanding of the relevance and importance of the customer engagement theory and the impact it may have in strengthening the relationships between factors of the relationship marketing domain and customer loyalty.

From a managerial perspective, it is evident that short-term insurers should facilitate customer engagement carrying out strategies that foster customer commitment, ensure customer satisfaction, build trust and create customer value.

Building on the work of earlier relationship and quality management scholars, the study provides new insight into the role and relevance of relationship quality and value factors and customer engagement, while simultaneously being assessed for their contribution to customer loyalty.

This study aims to broaden understanding of why customers engage in helping and feedback citizenship behaviours. Beyond traditional attitude–behaviour relationships, limited insight is available on the additional role of symbolic factors, such as self-congruence perceptions, in motivating citizenship behaviours. Literature further suggests self-monitoring affects social behaviours, yet extant research has not accounted for this personality trait’s moderating influence on customer helping and feedback citizenship behaviours. Accordingly, a research model is developed, providing novel insight into factors promoting helping and feedback citizenship behaviours and the moderating role of self-monitoring in a ride-hailing service context.

The research is guided by self-monitoring literature and the social exchange and similarity-attraction theories. Survey data from 609 ride-hailing customers in an emerging market country is analysed using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling, and the chi-square difference test.

This study shows that perceived justice (a cognitive attitudinal factor) influences helping citizenship intention in the low self-monitoring group, while self-congruity (a symbolic factor) affects helping and feedback citizenship intention in the high self-monitoring group. Affective commitment towards the ride-hailing brand (an affective attitudinal factor) does not impact customer citizenship intentions.

Although customers may be interested in brands’ functional and symbolic benefits, positive attitudes about the service experienced motivate low self-monitors, while a symbolic-driven factor like self-congruence is more successful in motivating high self-monitors to engage in customer citizenship behaviours.

Novel insight is obtained into the additional influence of self-congruity on customer citizenship behaviours, a neglected factor in extant research involving customer citizenship behaviours that is explained by the similarity-attraction theory. Furthermore, this study provides a pioneering view of the relevance of the self-monitoring theory in moderating customer citizenship behaviours, specifically in ride-hailing services.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the proposed relationships between perceived usefulness (a dimension of perceived value), the relationship quality factors (competence trust and continuous commitment) and positive word-of-mouth intentions in an electronic banking setting.

A survey was conducted among 511 electronic banking customers.

Continuous commitment was found to mediate the relationships between perceived usefulness and competence trust with positive word-of-mouth intention, respectively.

The results indicate the role of perceived value and relationship quality in contributing to positive word-of-mouth intention.

The findings could also guide banking institutions in managing their existing electronic banking customers more appropriately and to encourage them to engage in word-of-mouth behaviour that will convince other potential users of the benefits of the service.

Little is known on a mediated model noting the connection between perceived value, the relationship quality factors competence trust and continuous commitment and positive word-of-mouth intention. The findings provide more insight into the matter and accordingly contribute to the developing body of knowledge on perceived value, relationship quality and behavioural intention and their importance to the stream of research on positive word of mouth.

The aim of this study is to determine whether customer satisfaction, trust and commitment as relationship quality factors can be valuable to a luxury motor vehicle dealership in generating favourable behavioural intentions concerning post-purchase service and repair offerings.

A descriptive research design was followed, and self-administered questionnaires were fielded among customers of the luxury motor vehicle dealership. A total of 301 questionnaires were returned and the interrelationships between the constructs were examined using structural equation modelling.

It was discovered that customers who trust the dealership may be more committed, and commitment may strengthen the relationship between customer satisfaction and a favourable behavioural intention towards the dealership.

The findings of the study add to the developing body of empirical literature on relationship quality and behavioural intention.

The study indicates how relationship quality factors can influence behavioural intentions of customers, assist in building long-term relationships with customers and retain current customers where post-purchase service and repairs of luxury goods are concerned.

The study provides an emerging market perspective of the interrelationships between relationship quality factors affecting behavioural intention regarding service and repairs of luxury goods.