Targets of commitment in service provider‐consumer relationships: a prototyping study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the question of whether or not there are three distinct targets of commitment in consumers' relationships with their service providers; commitment to the service company, commitment to the individual service provider, and commitment to the individual provider as a friend or acquaintance. Design/methodology/approach – Initial theories regarding targets of commitment in service relationships are developed with reference to the literature in psychology, organizational behavior, and marketing. Exploratory research into the commitment construct in service relationships is conducted using a prototyping approach. The prototyping approach involves the exploration of natural language concepts including the identification of a concept's attributes, and the concept's relationship to other concepts. Findings – The results of the prototyping analysis give us preliminary evidence to suggest that that the three targets of commitment while related, are independent. Each target of commitment has a number of unique and central attributes. Originality/value – Commitment is an important variable in the study of relationship marketing; however, in most marketing studies, the target of a customer's commitment is not clearly defined, nor have potential differences between various targets of commitment been fully explored. This research highlights the fact that relationship commitment is a multi‐level variable. In addition, this research demonstrates the effectiveness of the prototyping methodology in the exploration of abstract concepts and the relationship between them.