What Drives Customers’ Loyalty and Willingness to Pay Over Time: A Comparative Study of the Long-Term Effects of Customer Satisfaction and Customer–Company Identification

Previous research has identified customer satisfaction (CS) and customer–company identification (CCI) as two of the most important concepts in relationship marketing. Despite their proclaimed importance, comparative research on their long-term effectiveness is surprisingly scarce. This study makes a first attempt to address this research void and offers a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of CS and CCI in driving important customer outcomes over time. Latent growth analyses of rich longitudinal data from customers over nine measurement points spanning 43 weeks (n = 6930) show that CS and CCI have positive initial effects on customers’ loyalty and willingness to pay (WTP), but differ in their ability to maintain these positive effects over time. While the positive effects of CS decrease more rapidly, the effects of CCI are significantly more persistent.