Customer Psychological Contract Violation, Impact Studies Intention Of Switching Costs For Repeat Purchases

Psychological contract has its mature theory in the study of organizational behavior, while it is still in the initial phase of study in the field of marketing. However, it has been admitted that psychological contract exits widely in relationship between customers and manufacturers, especially in service industry whose customers are hypersensitive to psychological contract violation, which is negative related to customer repurchase. Notwithstanding this, psychological contract violation will not absolutely lead to customer losing if customers meet with huge switching costs among manufacturers.The thesis sets psychological contract violation as an independent variable, customer repurchase intention as a dependent variable and switching costs as a moderator. The psychological contract violation is divided into two dimensions including transactional psychological contract violation and relational psychological contract violation while customer switching costs is measured from procedural switching costs, financial switching costs and relational switching costs. After conducting an empirical research in the service industry, the paper arrives at these conclusions:Firstly, customer psychological contract violation consists of two dimensions including transactional psychological contract violation and relational psychological contract violation, both of which have negative effect on customer repurchase intention. Secondly, in regarding of transactional psychological contract violation, customer switching costs moderates relation between contract violation and repurchase intention. That is to say, the negative effects of transactional psychological contract violation posed on repurchase intention can be weakened by switching costs. On the contrary, as for relational violation, such moderator can hardly regulate their relations.According to the results of this study, the paper raises suggestions on marketing management. On one hand, manufacturers should take steps to enhance customer relationship management in order to curb the forming of psychological contract violation. On the other hand, manufacturers should work on a reasonable marketing strategy, like forging high switching costs to discourage customers from switching to other manufacturers so as to offset the negative effect of transactional psychological contract violation on customer repurchase. The innovation of this paper lies in the variable like customer switching costs, which moderates customer psychological contract violation’s effect on repurchase intention. By studying this moderator, the paper explains company’s problems that can’t be explained through existing theories on one hand, while enriches customer psychological contract violation in marketing context on the other hand.