TOWARDS A DISPOSITIONAL APPROACH FOR INVESTIGATING INDUSTRY EFFECTS IN CONSUMER-FIRM RELATIONSHIPS

Few, if any, past studies have attempted to develop a model to capture and explain industry context variability and hypothesize its effects on consumer-firm relationships. Generally industry effects are ignored, described or explained post hoc. Using the notion of consumers’ dispositions toward a market, we propose a framework for understanding the influence of industry context on consumer satisfaction, trust, value and loyalty in relational exchanges. Specifically, we utilize two dispositional dimensions—consumers’ valence toward the sellers in an industry, and consumers’ marketplace efficacy to capture industry context effects and examine their impact on relational constructs. Using data from consumers in relational exchanges in retail clothing and airline travel industry contexts, we provide an initial test of our framework. Our results show that industry contexts matter and yield significant direct and moderating effects on consumer-firm relationships. The study underscores the promise of a dispositional approach for providing insights for the theory and practice of relationship marketing, resolving outstanding questions, and proposing fruitful areas for further examination.