An Augmented Model of Customer Loyalty for Organizational Purchasing of Financial Services

ABSTRACT

Purpose. To understand how the drivers of loyalty in business-to-business (B2B) markets for financial services might be moderated by short- versus long-term relational orientation to help companies in those markets optimize the allocation of their marketing resources.

Methodology/Approach. The basis of this study was the European Customer Satisfaction Index (ECSI) model of customer loyalty, which was relevant for this B2B market because the ratio of customers to suppliers was large and, therefore, similar to a business-to-consumer (B2C) market. Partial least squares (PLS) was used to estimate the ECSI model in two groups defined by a median split on Ganesan's (1994) buyer's relational orientation (BRO) scale.

Findings. Buyer's relational orientation was a significant moderator of several relationships in the ECSI model. For buyers with a higher (long-term) BRO, loyalty was driven by satisfaction, corporate image, product quality, and service quality. For buyers with a lower (short-term) BRO, what little loyalty existed was driven by product quality alone, rather than service quality, image, or satisfaction.

Originality/Value/Contribution. This study demonstrates the usefulness of testing for differences in the drivers of loyalty for customers with short-versus long-term relational orientation. The management implications are the usefulness of adopting a portfolio approach to managing financial services customers by (1) segmenting customers into high and low BRO groups and (2) implementing different marketing approaches for these two segments.

KEYWORDS:

• Customer loyalty
• financial services
• satisfaction
• relational orientation
• moderating effect
• portfolio approach
• partial least squares