Affective commitment and customer loyalty in crowdsourcing: antecedents, interdependencies, and practical implications

Abstract

Crowdsourcing, the outsourcing of previously internal processes within the corporate value chain to an external crowd of people, has become increasingly popular in retail. In applying this practice, retailers aim not only at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of their value creation process, but also at increasing the affective commitment and loyalty of their customers. Surprisingly, the effects of crowdsourcing on affective commitment and customer loyalty, and the factors influencing these objectives have hardly been researched. This paper closes this research gap. Through expert interviews and experimental studies, it comes to the conclusion that especially satisfaction with the crowdsourcing process and sense of virtual community are relevant factors impacting affective commitment and customer loyalty. The paper concludes with recommendations for optimizing these factors in retail practice.

Keywords:

• crowdsourcing
• process satisfaction
• sense of virtual community
• affective commitment
• customer loyalty

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.