The Impact of Service Quality, Relationship Satisfaction, Trust and Commitment on Loyalty: An Empirical Investigation in a Business-to-Business Services Context

Abstract

Drawing on relationship marketing literature, the authors empirically test a model of business loyalty in a sample of 234 advertising agencies' clients, integrating the concepts of service quality, relationship satisfaction, trust and commitment. The study builds on recent advances in services marketing theory assessing the relationships underlying the identified constructs in the advertising industry. The results demonstrated a clear pattern of service quality dimensions following the Grönroos conceptualisation and a number of other important findings including the empirical verification of the mediating role of overall relationship satisfaction in the formation of loyalty attributes. The research instrument is a questionnaire containing 26 items. The measuring scale used was a 10-point Likert scale from 1 (completely unsatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied) with items evaluating the following constructs: global relationship satisfaction, communication, delivery service, administrative service, commercial service, trust, commitment, and loyalty.