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Can economic bonus programs jeopardize service relationships?

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Abstract

Research findings on the impact of economic bonus programs on service relationships are contradictory. While some studies find positive effects of economic bonus programs on customer’s relational behavior, other studies demonstrate negative effects. Building on self-determination theory, Dholakia (J Market Res 43(2):109–120, 2006) points at a possible explanation for these conflicting results, arguing that economic marketing programs have negative effects on self-determined customers when the program is perceived as controlling by them. By testing the effect of four different kinds of economic bonus programs on loyalty in an experimental setting using a nationwide representative sample of 768 participants, this research is the first that provides empirical evidence that economic bonus programs can indeed endanger service relationships by reducing customer’s self-determination. Implications of our findings for the abundance of economic bonus programs offered to service customers these days are highlighted.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Aneta Bludau for her help with the data collection and questionnaire design and Markus Groth for his helpful and constructive comments on a previous version of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing and Media, College of Media, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Bauhausstr. 11, 99423, Weimar, Germany

    Thorsten Hennig-Thurau & Michael Paul

Authors
  1. Thorsten Hennig-Thurau
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  2. Michael Paul
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thorsten Hennig-Thurau.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 4

Table 4 List of items and goodness-of-fit measures of partial least squares analysis
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Hennig-Thurau, T., Paul, M. Can economic bonus programs jeopardize service relationships?. Service Business 1, 159–175 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-006-0012-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-006-0012-9

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