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How Relationship Norms Affect Consumers’ Stance on Differential Customer Treatment

  • Differential Treatment
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Abstract

We examine how the diferent ways in which corporations present themselves in mass marketing affect consumers’ stance on differential customer treatment (i.e., service aligned to customer profitability). We show that when the service provider presents itself as the consumers’friend, consumers expect differential customer treatment to a lesser extent than do consumers who are treated as the service provider’s business partner. Nevertheless, consumers do not differ in their fairness perceptions of differential customer treatment. The level of perceived unfairness of differential customer treatment is high, regardless of the service provider’s presentation as a friend or as a business partner.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair for Work and Organizational Psychology, Nägelsbachstr. 49c, 91052, Erlangen, Germany

    Sabine Hommelhoff

  2. Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zürich, Weinbergstr. 56/58, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland

    Florian von Wangenheim

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  1. Sabine Hommelhoff
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  2. Florian von Wangenheim
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Correspondence to Sabine Hommelhoff.

Additional information

This research was supported by two foundations, Dr.-Ing. Leonhard-Lorenz-Stiftung and Bund der Freunde der Technischen Universität München. Grants were awarded to Sabine Hommelhoff. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and Nicolas Brüggemann for his help with answer coding

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Hommelhoff, S., von Wangenheim, F. How Relationship Norms Affect Consumers’ Stance on Differential Customer Treatment. Schmalenbach Bus Rev 67, 196–225 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396874

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396874

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