Discovering the Dark Side of Service Relationships… or Why Long-lasting and Exclusive Relationships are Self-destructing

Abstract

This article deals with the respective roles of the two facets of relationship commitment (affective and calculative) and interpersonal trust (reliability and benevolence) in building a relational exchange of different types of customer (mono- vs. multi-loyal, longstanding vs. new). The study, conducted in retail banking (N = 1,999), shows that: 1) calculative commitment, which grows over time, prevents relational exchange; 2) in the long term, customer trust generally has a decreasing role while affective commitment becomes critical in the relational exchange; 3) contact persons' benevolence encourages — via a reciprocal effect — higher customer benevolence, especially when their vulnerability is high; 4) inversely, contact persons' reliability generates contrast effects and sways monogamous customers toward negative intentions. Implications for customer relationship management (longstanding/new, mono/multi) are highlighted.

Keywords

Dark side relationship marketing relational behaviors relational selling trust affective commitment financial services

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