Discussion Leader Comments

Abstract

Services Marketing scholars often link service quality and customer satisfaction to service customer loyalty. The establishment and maintenance of customer loyalty is important to a service firm's profitability chain in that higher levels of loyalty and customer retention reduce the costs associated with recruiting and retaining new customers. Loyalty drives firm profits and stakeholder reinvestments in quality via repeat purchase and word-of-mouth referrals (Reichheld and Sasser 1990; Jones and Sasser 1995). In order to more fully understand customer loyalty, its antecedents and its consequences, service marketing researchers are approaching its study from a relationship marketing perspective. Indeed, the goal of a service firm's relationship marketing efforts is to create and maintain customer loyalty; but, what drives loyalty in customer relationships? The three empirical papers discussed in this commentary address this important question and contribute additional insight into the nature of consumer service relationships.