Climbing the Commitment Ladder

Within the framework of relationship marketing, the authors hypothesized that the degree to which customers’ expectations were disconfirmed for different service dimensions would place customers on different levels of a commitment ladder. The steps on the commitment ladder studied ranged from being a one-time patron of an organization (a “customer”) to persuading others to switch to one’s own service firm (an “advocate”). On a sample of 2,007 patrons from three service businesses, some support for predicting commitment levels based on disconfirmations of specific facets of service was found. Implications and conclusions are discussed.