老顾客的价值都一样吗?——基于承诺—信任模型的异质老顾客保留意愿对比研究

Is Regular Customer Value the Same?——Comparative Study of the Retention Willingness of Heterogeneous Regular Customers Based on Commitment-Trust Model

本文专注于不同性质老顾客价值的研究,基于归因理论将老顾客异质性引入"承诺-信任"模型,重新构建了专门针对老顾客保留意愿内在机制的理论模型。本研究利用833个有效样本进行了实证检验,结果表明,普通老顾客与被赢回顾客因性质的不同而存在显著差异,被赢回顾客不仅较普通老顾客的价值更高,而且其顾客价值波动更小;就老顾客而言,顾客满意通过顾客信任和顾客承诺对顾客保留意愿起中介作用;被赢回顾客保留意愿的内在路径关系强度显著高于普通老顾客。此外,本研究能够为企业在实践中有效保留顾客以及实施精细化的顾客关系管理提供决策依据。

Customer is the source of profit and the motivation of sustainable development ot enterprises. The question that how can enterprises efficiently improve customer retention rate is hard to answer and of great importance. In spite the existing theoretical and empirical analysis, relevant mechanisms have not been developed to describe and explain this phenomenon in this field. Most of the existing researches about customer retention willingness always categorize customers into two groupsregular customers and new customers. And then explain the mechanism of customer retention willingness by using the features of regular customers. This categorizationsimply distinguishes regular customers and new customers and ignores the influence of the heterogeneity of regular customers on the retention willingness. In order to improve the customer retention rate, we have to solve two critical questions. Firstly, make better understanding of the mechanism of customer retention willingness, only in this way, can enterprises implement nichetargeting strategies and tactics to maintain regular customers. Secondly, find out the right types of regular customers that worth enterprises＇ efforts, then enterprises can improve regular customer retention willingness with lower costs and improve the customer value at the same time. In another words, only by deeply understanding the mechanism of regular customer retention willingness and distinguishing the important regular customers from the others, can enterprises improve their performances. Based on the attribution theory and Commitment-Trust Model, by using the data of hotel services industry of China, this paper focus on different nature of the regular customer value, and constructs a new theoretical model to measure regular customer value. And this model can be applied to make comparison between ordinary regular customer value and win-backed customer value. 833 valid samples are used to make empirical analysis about the hypotheses raised in this paper, and several important implications are got. Firstly, the win-backed customer value is higher and fluctuates less than ordinary regular customer value. Secondly, with respect to regular customers, customer trust and customer commitment can moderate the effect of customer satisfaction on customer retain willingness. Thirdly, the relationship between customer trust and customer commitment and customer retention willingness of win-back customer is more robust than that of ordinary regular customers. Furthermore, this research can raise several practical implications for the retention of customers and elaborate customer relationship management. Firstly, the understanding of andemphasis on regular customers＇ heterogeneity is of great significance for the development of enterprises. The key of enterprises＇ sustainable development lies in thecontinuous exploration of customer value with high efficiency and rationality. This paper finds out that the heterogeneity of regular customer value is also of great importance for the improvement of customer retention rate. Secondly, the enterprises should pay attention to the important role that customer trust and customer commitment plays in the improvement of customer retention willingness. This paper shows that the effort of regular customers＇ satisfaction to the improvement of regular customer retention willingness is mainly gained through the customer trust and customer commitment. Therefore, the enhancement of customer satisfaction is not enough; enterprises should pay more attention to improve customer trust and customer commitment. Thirdly, the emphasis of win-backed customer value is of great significance for the reduction of customer retention costs and the improvement of enterprises＇ customer relationship management efficiency. This paper find that, compared with the ordinary regular customer, win- back customersare the real critical customers, customer satisfaction, customer trust, customer commitment and customer retention willingness of win-backed customers is not only significantly higher than the ordinary regular customers, and the regular customer value is also more stable. Therefore, when enterprises make tradeoff between ordinary and win-backed customers, they should give priority to win-backed customers with higher and stable customer value.