Journal of Services Marketing Emerald Article: Does "true" personal or service loyalty last? A longitudinal study Liliana L. Bove, Lester W. Johnson Article information: To cite this document: Liliana L. Bove, Lester W. Johnson, (2009),"Does "true" personal or service loyalty last? A longitudinal study", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 23 Iss: 3 pp. 187 - 194 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/08876040910955198 Downloaded on: 29-04-2012 References: This document contains references to 31 other documents To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com This document has been downloaded 2962 times. Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by Glion & Les Roches For Authors: If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service. Information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Additional help for authors is available for Emerald subscribers. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com With over forty years' experience, Emerald Group Publishing is a leading independent publisher of global research with impact in business, society, public policy and education. In total, Emerald publishes over 275 journals and more than 130 book series, as well as an extensive range of online products and services. Emerald is both COUNTER 3 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. *Related content and download information correct at time of download.

Does ���true��� personal or service loyalty last? A longitudinal study Liliana L. Bove Department of Management and Marketing, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia, and Lester W. Johnson Melbourne Business School, Carlton, Australia Abstract Purpose ��� The paper aims to use Dick and Basu���s two-dimensional matrix that identifies four types of customer loyalty: true, spurious, latent and non-loyal. It seeks to investigate if these four distinct clusters of loyalty existed both in terms of loyalty to the individual service worker (personal loyalty) and loyalty to the firm (service loyalty). The paper also aims to examine the stability of the loyalty clusters. Design/methodology/approach ��� Using self-completion mail questionnaires, females over 18 who frequently used the service were surveyed at two time periods, 18 months apart. Of the original 341 respondents at time 1, only 137 (40 per cent) of these successfully completed the questionnaire at time 2. Findings ��� Even though the service context is such that the customer has the freedom of choice in selecting the service, the four loyalty clusters were found for both personal loyalty and service loyalty. Those customers who were originally classified as ���true��� loyals were the most stable group. Perceived credibility of the service worker and the length of the customer relationship with the service worker were found to be the main drivers of the type of customer loyalty cluster. Originality/value ��� This study provides further empirical support of the value of true loyal customers, defined in terms of both a positive relative attitude towards the object of loyalty and high repeat patronage behavior. A higher proportion of true loyal customers were retained by both the service worker and firm compared to the other loyalty types. Keywords Customer loyalty, Trust, Brand loyalty Paper type Research paper An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article. Introduction Oliver (1999, p. 34) defines loyalty as ���a deeply held commitment to rebuy or repatronize a preferred product/ service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same brand or same brand-set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behavior���. In a ���people-processing��� service the object of customer loyalty may be either the store/firm or a particular service worker. The former may be referred to as service loyalty (Gremler and Brown, 1998), the latter as personal loyalty (Bove and Johnson, 2002). To distinguish between the two is imperative, as personal loyalty is a strong driver of service loyalty (Bove and Johnson, 2006), presenting a potential problem for service managers when employees leave the business. On such occasions even if customers do not immediately defect the firm, their loyalty to the firm may be downgraded to that of spurious (high patronage, low positive attitude), making them susceptible to competitive offerings that may result in the migration to a new service provider (Bansal et al., 2005). The idea that loyalty is simply equivalent to repurchase has been discussed at length in the literature. It was Day (1969) who seemingly first introduced the two-dimensional concept of brand loyalty, namely to be ���truly loyal��� a consumer must hold a favorable attitude towards the brand in addition to repeatedly purchasing it. Dick and Basu (1994) suggested that relative attitude is a superior assessment to simply attitude, as it provides not only a measure of customer perceptions of the brand, but these in comparison to the competitive or alternative brands. There are two dimensions of relative attitude. These are: attitude strength (degree of preference) and attitudinal differentiation (degree of perceived differentiation). Dick and Basu go on to define four loyalty types defined by the individual���s relative attitude and repurchase propensity towards the brand. These have been labeled: 1 premium, intentional or true loyals, individuals with high attitudinal and behavioral loyalty 2 latent loyals, individuals with high attitudinal and low behavioral loyalty The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0887-6045.htm Journal of Services Marketing 23/3 (2009) 187���194 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0887-6045] [DOI 10.1108/08876040910955198] Received: May 2006 Revised: March 2007 Accepted: May 2007 The authors would like to acknowledge Miss Lisa Papaleo who assisted with phase two of data collection. 187