Study Of Social Ties As One Kind Of Switching Costs:a New Typology

Switching costs has always been a hot spot of marketing researches. Since it is a multidimentional variable, scholars have studied its typology using all kinds of approaches and several typologies have been proposed and acknowledged by the literature. One authoritative classification of switching costs is to conclude it into three types:procedure switching costs, economic switching costs and relational switching costs.Studies about customers’social ties find that the relationship among customers, i.e. customers’social ties, will obstruct their switching behavior to some extent, thus to affect their loyalty to the company. However, in all the previous studies about typology of switching costs, the relationship referring to relational switching costs is considered as that between customer and the service or product provider. There haven’t any study considering customers’social ties in these kinds of researches.This research is to study how customers’social ties can act as one kind of relational switching costs. We add social ties loss costs into the traditional typology to put forward a new switching costs typology. We examine how social ties loss costs can influence customer loyalty and the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and verify the rationality and effectiveness of the new typology. We do literature review, propose hypotheses, establish research model, and then do an empirical research to examine the hypotheses and research model. The research conclusion of this study improves and develops the definition and typology study of switching costs, and has some directive significance for company management practice.