Does Satisfaction Lead to Loyalty? An Attributional Theory Approach

Abstract

Research shows that increased customer satisfaction with the service experience leads to increased customer loyalty, however, up to sixty five percent of satisfied customers defect. In an effort to further understand these defections, the authors use attributional theory to develop a conceptual framework to examine the relationship between customer satisfaction with the experience and customer loyalty in increasing co-production and relational experiences. This paper presents propositions which suggest that customer attributions of credit act as the causal mechanism for these defections, such that internal attributions of credit by the customer in co-production experiences leads to decreased customer loyalty and that relational experiences can help to mitigate the effect of internal attributions on customer loyalty. As a result, this paper shows that present managerial strategies for managing customer defections concerned solely with customer satisfaction are insufficient in their present form.