|
|
This study uses this awareness-exploration-growth-commitment framework of customer relationship development. In addition, the key variables—emotions, trust, satisfaction, and purchases—are measured to see how these factors drive the stages to progress and how they relate to relationship development as a whole.
Theory Testing
The theory that customers move through relationship stages was empirically tested. The model of how the customer moves through these stages was also tested, and the key variables—emotions, trust, satisfaction, and purchases—were plotted across stages of relationship development. Whereas the stage the customer experiences is the customer’s “being,” how customers move to the next stage is the customer’s “becoming.”
Online, cross-sectional survey data from 500 customers of major electronics products and services were collected during a 2-week span (in September 2005) for this study. The most common products represented were iPods, computers, and cell phones; the most common companies referenced were Best Buy, Apple, and Circuit City.
Hypotheses based on the literature were formed about the links between the stages and about the relationships between the stages and the key variables. These hypotheses were tested using linear regression. Propositions were posed regarding how the key variables—emotions, trust, satisfaction, and purchases—changed over the relationship stages. These propositions were tested using curve estimations and difference tests. Finally, structural equation modeling fitted the “map” of the customer’s journey to the data, showing how customers move through stages in relation to the key variables.