Abstract
When customer familiarity increases, customer expertise is likely toincrease. Although expertise is known to affect informationprocessing in several ways, few studies have examined the effects offamiliarity on customers’ evaluations and behavioral intentions. Inthis study, it was found that a high level of prepurchase familiaritywas associated with more extreme (i.e., more polarized)postpurchase responses in customer satisfaction, repurchaseintentions, and word-of-mouth intentions compared to a lowprepurchase level of familiarity. More specifically, when serviceperformance was high, high-familiarity customers expressed ahigher level of satisfaction and behavioral intentions than did lessfamiliar customers. On the other hand, when performance was low,high-familiarity customers expressed lower levels of satisfaction andbehavioral intentions than did low-familiarity customers. ©2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.