How can businesses enhance customer resistance to brand switching?
File(s)
Author(s)
Liu, Yeyi
Eisingerich, Andreas
Duffek, Barbara
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
While prior research highlights the importance of building customer resistance to brand switching, the mechanisms through which businesses can reduce customer switching remains a black box. The present study addresses this important gap by articulating how brands can leverage the key benefits they provide to customers with the objective of reducing actual switching behavior and enhancing customer resistance to switch. Critically, the present study highlights how enriching benefits offered by brands can help reduce customer switching across various field settings and among diverse study respondents. Moreover, this research theoretically delineates and empirically tests the mechanisms of self-esteem and self-betrayal, through which brands’ enriching benefits lead to customer resistance to switching. A key managerial implication is that businesses can significantly benefit from building enriching benefits, which not only boost customers’ self-esteem but also reduces their feelings of self-betrayal, ultimately leading to a lower propensity to switch to alternative offerings.
Date Acceptance
2025-07-01
Citation
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
ISSN
0092-0703
Publisher
Springer
Journal / Book Title
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
Copyright Statement
Copyright This paper is embargoed until publication. Once published the author’s accepted manuscript will be made available under a CC-BY License in accordance with Imperial’s Research Publications Open Access policy (www.imperial.ac.uk/oa-policy).
License URL
Publication Status
Accepted