Abstract
A significant amount of research on customer relationships is inspired by a paradigm with the following causal variables: (1) the customer’s perception of attribute-level performance (e.g., reliability and courteous employee behavior) affects (2) the customer’s global evaluation of the supplier (e.g., in terms of customer satisfaction, perceived service quality, or perceived value). This evaluation, in turn, is assumed to affect (3) the customer’s behavioral intentions – and these intentions affect (4) overt customer behavior. Finally, it is assumed that customer behavior has an impact on (5) the firm’s profitability. This reasoning is sometimes referred to as the satisfaction-profit chain.