Types of Commitment in Marketing and Background of Customer Emotions - Assignment Example

Running Header: Marketing research Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code Date of Submission: Marketing research Question 1 Recently, consumer commitment has gained much interest after the introduction of trust-commitment theory of relationship marketing. Bansal et al. (2004, 23) describes that consumer commitment is one powerful predictor of various activities related to consumer retention for example through staying intentions and repurchasing intentions. It is also shown that it is necessary to build and enhance a long-term relationship with customers. This is because the relationships generate positive returns into the business. Ruth et al. (2002, 44) explains consumer commitment is therefore a key to marketing success and every business should ensure that they observe. Consumer involves provision of better services and the fact that services need ongoing membership as it is difficult to evaluate intangible services. This study supports the link between customer commitment and a firm’s profitability. It also shows how to increase consumer commitment and the different types of commitment in marketing. The study finally gives the method in which commitment is measured. Most studies gives that there are two dimension of commitment in marketing relationships. These include affective commitment which involves feelings of identification, loyalty and affiliation. The other type is continuance commitment which involves anticipated switching costs. Coulter and Mark (2000, 66) describes that others include normative commitment that involves feelings of reciprocity or obligation. Instrumental commitment, relational commitment and value based commitment. Among the above types affective commitment is the most predictive as it shows customer loyalty-related outcomes. The study therefore examines how each type of commitment affect the different types of services and shows how the power of commitment varies across customer variables. Commitment is the desire to maintain a valued relationship between buyers and sellers and is also applied in channel relationships. It also involves consumer relationships with the service providers, retail stores and brand owners. Commitment is applied in the field of psychology, organisational and marketing. The definition in all the these terms reflect that commitment is a relationship that involves both psychological state which include having a binding force, a link or a dedication to a particular brand or service provided. Dall'Olmo and Leslie (2000, 37) shows a motivational phenomenon of commitment involves maintaining a relationship with the sellers of repurchasing or in remaining in the organisation. Commitment therefore involved studies of psychology and organisational behaviour. Researchers show that people become committed due to various factors and to various targets such as commitment to people, organisations, pets, goals or ideals. The organisational behaviour differentiates commitment to an organisation, a profession, supervisor and a worker. Marketing on the other hand distinguishes commitment between service provided and commitment to service organisation. According to Bove and Lester (2001) affective commitment involves a person’s desire to remain in a relationship with the service provider and normative commitment is a feeling of obligation to a relationship. Continuance commitment shows consumer’s perception of the sacrifice linked to the termination of a relationship with service organisation. The three dimensions of commitment may be said to reflect a feeling of ‘want to stay’, ‘should stay’ and ‘have to stay’. The dimensions also show emotional, emotional, moral and rational forms of commitment. Organisational commitment was developed for the purpose of predicting employee retention. This is because retaining loyal customers yields an organisation more benefits and also set a focal point giving members the right direction to formulate necessary strategies. It also involves observing better job performance, having a positive word of mouth, socialising with others which bring about discretionary responses. Affective commitment gives predictive effects of both focal and discretionary responses as normative and continuance commitment only gives discretionary responses (Garbarino and Mark 1999, 70). Types of commitment in marketing Affective commitment This is the degree to which a customer is bonded psychologically to the service provider or it shows the consumer feelings about an organisation. It also shows the relative attitude shown by customers and repurchase intentions. Gilliland and Daniel (2002) puts it that it is a predictor of the willingness to pay more, advocacy depending on the number of services purchased. Affective commitment also drives focal and discretionary employee responses. Normative commitment This is defined as the degree to which a customer is bonded to the organisation basing on his or her sense of obligation to the organisation. This obligation is developed as a result of social pressure to perform in a certain manner or to conform to a particular standard of behaviour. Gruen et al. (2000, 34) shows an example of this is where a customer may feel obliged utilizing a certain landscaping service if the owner is a friend or a relative. In marketing normative commitment is based on social norm of reciprocity found in committed relationships such as friendships, communities or marriages. Higher levels of normative commitment results to higher customer responses that is more reciprocal in nature. This occurs in two ways which include customers responding in ways that help the service company and customers may also reciprocate to helping other customers and benefiting the organisation indirectly (Sui and Seyhmus 2003, 47). Continuance commitment This is the degree to which a customer is psychologically linked to the organisation on the basis of perceived costs associated with the termination of a relationship. These costs reflect lack of available alternatives in investment in a focal firm. Customers practicing continuance commitment are those who have given thought of lack of alternatives for example by considering the benefits of remaining with the current service provider and have realised that the cost of switching to another provider is higher than any potential gain. This is applied in marketing channel relationships and has been labeled as calculative commitment which shows that it is more of a rational bond, emotional or moral. Higher levels of continuance commitment result to higher levels of calculative forms of loyalty. This is where customers feel they have no alternative and are willing to pay more and willing to remain with the service provider. How commitment may be measured According to Dabholkar et al. (2000, 39) commitment may be measured through a survey containing various items of the constructs in the research model and scales which demonstrate good psychometric properties. The selected items each is to belong to affective, normative and continuance commitment. The scales used in measuring are linked to marketing settings. This measures the focal customer response and two discretionary responses. Repurchase intentions are also measured by a four-item scale. This is measured using self- oriented behaviour by selecting items and observing the willingness to pay more and fidelity. Other discretionary behaviours are used in measuring service quality. This is by use of four items and each construct is confirmed to be uni-dimensional or not. Any item with weak loadings is dropped (Pimentel and Kristy 2004). Question 2 According to Sui and Seyhmus (2003) emotions are said to be mental states of readiness that arise as a result of appraisals of events or a persons thoughts. Emotions are markers, mediators and moderators of consumer responses which are then analysed. Customer satisfaction is influenced by their emotions and how they feel deep inside their hearts about a particular service provided. This question therefore will analyse the role of emotions in marketing and it gives practical suggestions on how emotions can help in selling a product. Emotions can be defined as a mental stage of readiness that arises from cognitive appraisal of events or thoughts they have a phenomenological tone and accompanied by physiological processes (Phillips and Baumgartner 2002). Emotions are often expressed physically and may result in specific actions to affirm or cope with the emotion, depending on its nature and meaning for the person having them. Emotions are put in two categories, which include positive emotions and negative emotions. Researches in the marketing discipline have largely adopted the appraisal theory of emotions to study customer emotions in service consumption. The theory has the ability to integrate the informational and directive roles of specific emotions in goal-directed. Equally, cognitive appraisal theory of customer emotions is appropriate for this research as it allows predictive ability of both antecedents and consequences of customer emotions in collective hedonic services (Fullerton 1999). Background of Customer Emotions It is difficult to draw the line between emotions and mood as they are intentional. In marketing, emotions may be expressed as a result of advertisements which can be divided into thinking ads and feelings ads. Thinking advertisements involves giving factual information about a product or the utilitarian consequences of using a particular product. Feelings advertisements involves the emotions that one will feel through the ownership of a product. Interactions of emotions may also occur with variables such as motivational and ability factors for example it is found that people who highly need recognition use positive messages to describe themselves. This research conceptualised customer emotions as having three primary antecedents (Venetis and Pervez 2004, 77). Support for these antecedents was found in the literature and through an initial qualitative study undertaken as part of this research. The first antecedent of customer emotions, service surroundings, is conceptually based on the services-cape model and role of the environment model. Various researches focus on understanding the interior premises of the service environment in retail and restaurant contexts and considered the influence of the exterior of a service environment. Coulter and Mark (2000, 66) reviewed and the qualitative findings of an exploratory study, the service surroundings was found to consist of three dimensions including interior facilities, exterior facilities and staged atmospherics. Consumer behaviour is essential in the understanding of what motivates and helps in decision strategies between products with varying importance. The subject is more important in helping marketers to adapt and improve their marketing campaigns and marketing strategies to effectively reach the consumer. Consumer behaviour is applied in the marketing strategy to make better marketing campaigns; in public policy, in social marketing to get ideas to consumers instead of selling something and to make people to be better consumers (Phillips and Baumgartner 2002). According to O'Shaughnessy and O'Shaughnessy (2002, 524) gives it was, therefore, hypothesized that the service environment has a positive influence on customer emotions, particularly in collective hedonic services. The conceptualisation of the second antecedent, termed social surroundings, is guided by four seminal works in the literature, discussion of the role of environment, the concept of social-service scope and social surroundings and the concept of social presence. Prior research has mainly concentrated on investigating direct customer-to-customer interactions, customer dysfunctional behaviour and considered social surroundings as a dimension of service quality (Phillips and Baumgartner 2002, 243). As such, prior research has failed to consider the possible array of social dimensions relevant to service encounters. This shows that the influence of social elements on customer emotions remains largely unknown in collective hedonic services. Social surroundings refer to the social elements in the service setting that can affect a customer’s experience. Social surrounding is found to comprise three dimensions which include non-verbal crowd behaviour, verbal crowd behaviour and social atmospherics. It was therefore assumed that social surroundings significantly influence customer emotions. Palmatier et al. (2006, 36) explains the third antecedent of customer emotions, service performance, is based predominantly on the service quality study included in the servqual model. Service performance is used in this research to evaluate both the process and outcome of the service delivery, and to consider the performance of for example athletes and performer in service delivery. Based on the study and the findings, service performance was assumed as comprising two dimensions which include entertainer performance and service delivery performance. It was therefore shown that service performance impacts on customer emotions in collective hedonic services. Consequences of Customer Emotions Customer emotions have various effects on the marketing of products. These effects include customer satisfaction, perceived value and behavioural intentions. Fullerton (1999) explains that customer satisfaction is seen as an overall affective based post-consumption judgment. Mattila and Enz (2002, 268) shows customer emotions influence customer satisfaction in product, utilitarian and retail service contexts. Perceived value shows the overall evaluation of the utility of a service. Studies show customer emotions influence perceived value in a collective hedonic service for example sporting match thus, it is useful to revisit and extend this relationship by studying it in a variety of collective mass hedonic services contexts. Behavioural intentions are defined as the subjective probability that an individual will take a particular action. The interrelationship between satisfaction, perceived value and behavioural intentions has not been investigated in the context of collective hedonic services. It is therefore seen that emotions are ubiquitous in marketing as they influence the processing of information, and mediate responses in order to form persuasive appeals. Emotions also measure the effects of marketing stimuli, initiate goal setting, and enact goal directed behaviours and measures consumers welfare. Emotions are also subject to actions (Bloemer 1999, 82). They also influence cause and effect. They are root of motivation. Some of the emotions expressed in marketing include joy, trust, fear, surprise, anticipation, anger, disgust and sadness. Emotions are also displayed through facial expression, body language or through a reason. According to Leeuwen et al. (2002, 99) emotion marketing has been used in marketing various brands such as Honda, Tesco or M&S. Honda advertisements seem to portray an emotion and this attracts consumers to buying the product. Social networks can also be used to analyse consumers emotions for example by analysing the words expressed on twitter, blogs etc. These show how people feel about a brand and enables manufacturers to adjust according to the consumers feelings (Machleit and Eroglu 2000, 101). References Bansal, Harvir, Gregory Irving, and Shirley Taylor. 2004. “A Three-Component Model of Customer Commitment to Service Providers,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 32 (3): 23-50. Bloemer, Josee, Ko Ruyter, and Martin Wetzels. 1999. “Linking perceived service quality and service loyalty: a multi-dimensional perspective,” European Journal of Marketing, 33 (11/12): 82-106. Bove, Liliana and Lester Johnson. 2001. Customer trust of and commitment to an individual service worker. Predictors of personal loyalty, American Marketing Association. Coulter, Robin and Mark Ligas. 2000. “The long good-bye: The dissolution of customer service provider relationships.” Psychology and Marketing, 17 (8): 66-95. Dabholkar, Pratibha, David Shepherd, and Dayle Thorpe. 2000. “A comprehensive framework for service quality: An investigation of critical conceptual and measurement issues through a longitudinal study”. Journal of Retailing, 76 (2): 39-73. Dall'Olmo, Riley, and Leslie Chernatony. 2000. “The service brand as relationships builder.” British Journal of Management, 11 (2): 37-50. Fullerton, Gordon. 1999. The role of commitment in service relationships. Doctoral Dissertation. Queen's University. Garbarino, Ellen, and Mark Johnson. 1999. “The Different Roles of Satisfaction, Trust, and Commitment in Customer Relationships.” Journal of Marketing, 63 (2): 70-87. Gilliland, David, and Daniel Bello. 2002. “Two sides to attitudinal commitment. 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Venetis, Karin, and Pervez Ghauri. 2004, “Service quality and customer retention. Building long-term relationships.” European Journal of Marketing, 38 (11/12): 77-98. Read More