Effects of company reputation on commitment, loyalty, and identification, and their respective influence on customer citizenship behaviours

Abstract

Company reputation is considered a hard to build, but an easy to lose immaterial asset. It is known to offer numerous financial and non-financial benefits, such as increased price premiums, customer loyalty, stronger company growth, and attracting better recruits. Included among these are also the so-called citizenship behaviours. The purpose of the study was to expand knowledge on the connections between company reputation and citizenship behaviours. Commitment and loyalty are constructs known to be influenced by reputation, and likewise to influence citizenship behaviours. One of the objectives was to confirm their status. The focal point of the study was to expand the model to include customers’ identification with the company. Generic citizenship behaviours and word of mouth intentions were measured as outcomes. Trust was also tested as moderator for reputation-commitment and reputation-identification connections. The study was constructed as a quantitative survey set into online fashion retail context. The data acquisition was executed over approximately two weeks and resulted in 211 valid responses from Facebook followers of the co-operating company. The analysis was carried out using IBM SPSS Statistics and AMOS; structural equation modelling was used to test the viability of the model and hypotheses. The results were partly in accord with the previous literature. Factors measuring commitment and trust were removed from the model due to validity issues, thus remaining untested. Reputation had significant influence on loyalty and identification, as well as both outcome variables. These were as literature suggested. Loyalty notably influenced word of mouth intentions, but not citizenship behaviours. Identification in turn influenced citizenship behaviours, but not word of mouth intentions. Both constructs were expected to positively influence the outcome variables.