Abstract:

The term "win-backed customers"are customers who have been won-backed after losing by the firms, are of great significance for firms’ further development. Based on attribution theory, this paper built a theoretical model to analyze the key factors that affect the retention willingness of win-backed customers. 382 valid samples are used to make empirical analysis about the hypotheses raised in this paper. Several implications were found through the analysis. Firstly, the moderating effect of customer emotional trust on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer retention willingness is stronger than that of cognitive trust. Secondly, types of switching cost differ in the moderating effect on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer retention willingness. On one hand, financial switching cost has positive moderating effect on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer cognitive trust, while relational switching cost has positive effect on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer emotional trust. Besides, this paper builds a new framework to study customer retention willingness, and puts forward several managerial implications for firms to prevent the win-back-to-loss risk and to enhance the retention rate of win-backed customers.

Key words: Win-backed Customers, Attribution Theory, Customer Emotional Trust, Customer Cognitive Trust, Customer Retention Willingness