Satisfied customers' love toward retailers: A cross-product exploration

This study attempts to increase our understanding of the phenomenon of love specifically in the apparel and grocery retailing contexts. By incorporating "customer love," a construct that helps explain variation in satisfied customers' emotional responses to retailers, this study proposes a mechanism by which love is formed and manifested in the sequence of emotional loyalty articulated by Barnes (2005). The empirical results show that customer love is predicted by perceived relationship investment, hedonic store experience, and symbolic store experience. Customer love and symbolic store experience, in turn, are linked to a higher level of competitive insulation, ultimately leading to action loyalty.