The dynamic process of customer psychological contracts in a service context

Xin Zhao, Na Fu, Susan Taylor, and Patrick C Flood

This study aims to extend our understanding of the customer-service team relationship from a new angle, that is, the customer psychological contract.

Introduction

Managing customer relationships is important for all organizations particularly for service organizations due to the pre-eminence of the customer experience and the relentless pressure to improve sales performance (Shi, Shi, Allan, & Wang, 2009). Managing B2C relationships has attracted increasing attention among researchers (Mende, Bolton, & Bitner, 2012). However, the diverse responses of customers to the relationship with service providers still seem unclear. This study proposes a new approach to understanding the customer–service provider relationship, namely the concept of the customer psychological contract (PC), which can be used to manage the customer–service provider relationships. PC is defined as an...

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