Consumers' Relational Behavior: An Integrated Model of Psychological Contract, Trust, and Commitment

摘要

Although most key drivers of relationship outcomes in consumer markets are now identified and understood, past studies that have examined these constructs capture only the outcome of the exchange; they do not capture the exchange process between two relational parties. Past scholars have explored the role of psychological contract violation in the relationships between service providers and consumers (Pavlou and Gefen, 2005), its influence on trust and commitment (Kingshott and Pecotich, 2007), and the relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and affective commitment (Lovblad and Bantekas, 2010), but these studies are limited to examining two types of psychological contract derived from Rousseau's (1990) classification of psychological contracts while the mediating role of a communal psychological contract (CPC) has been largely unexplored. This research aims to advance the understanding of consumers' relational behavior with service providers by exploring various types of psychological contracts and incorporating them in the model as the antecedents of satisfaction, trust, and commitment to address two key questions: (1) how two types of psychological contracts (i.e. transactional and relational) influence the formation of a communal psychological contract? and (2) the extent to which psychological contracts affect consumers' satisfaction, trust, and commitment to a service provider?