Relationship investments have been shown to generate strong customer relationships that enhance customer loyalty (De Wulf, Odekerken, and Robert 2001 Liang, Chen, and Wang 2008; Yoon, Choi, and Sohn 2008). As Yoon, Choi, and Sohn (2008) pointed out that the best point of their models is to use a global construct, relationship quality, by a combination of trust, commitment, and satisfaction, which offers the best assessment of relationship strength. However, relationship quality as a construct has its intrinsic weaknesses. It has no clear definition itself and different researchers may include different dimensions forrelationship quality. For example, Crosby, Evans, and Cowles (1990) and Liang, Chen, and Wang (2008) consider relationship satisfaction and.trust to be the dimensions of relationship quality, De Wulf, Odekerken, and Robert (2001) and Yoon, Choi, and Sohn (2008) add relationship commitment besides satisfaction and trust, while Palmatier (2008) includes commitment, trust, reciprocity norms, and exchange efficiency as the indicators of relationship quality. Another weakness of the existing studies of customer relationship investments is the common method bias caused by the fact that all the variables are measured from the same source in terms of customer's self report.
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