Buffering Effects of Brand Community Identification in Service Failures : the Role of Customer Citizenship Behaviors

Kurzfassung/Abstract

With two field studies, this research highlights the role of brand community identification (BCI) as a source of customers' repurchase intentions and also reveals how BCI creates a buffering effect, protecting against the negative repercussions of service failures for repurchase intentions. The first study builds on social identity theory and investigates BCI as a driver of repurchase intentions; it explains this positive relationship according to single dimensions of customer citizenship behavior. The second study establishes that BCI mitigates the negative effect of service failures on customers' repurchase intentions. These results call attention to the need to build and maintain customers' strong BCI, because such investments encourage favorable customer–customer helping and advocacy that drive repurchase intentions. Moreover, strong BCI may reduce a firm's required service recovery efforts, because customers with strong BCI perceive service failures less negatively.