Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

same quantum of benefit received. Since the nature of the financial investments are such that they areeasily evaluable and agreegable, and non memorable in nature, people try to reciprocate immediately. Ithas also been found that receiving a monetary favour results in feelings of indebtedness and provide asignificant motive to charity giving (Dawson, 1988). Similarly, receiving free samples prior to purchasecause sense of indebtedness and uneasiness among buyers (Nataliya, 2005). These feelings ofindebtedness are negative feelings in nature. Further, it was found that when people get financial basedinvestment prior to purchase, these investments provide extrinsic motivation to reciprocate to theinvestments received. Therefore, we hypothesizes thatH1) Financial investments would result in customer obligationSocial investmentsSocial relationship investments have been categorized into communication based investments, preferentialtreatments and non price based investments (De Wulf et al, 2001). It has been well documented that socialbonds enhances customer patronage by providing psychological benefits to the customers (Berry, 1995).These bonds offer hedonic value to the customers by providing experiential, emotional and affective worthto consumption (Chandon et al., 2000). These types of bonds take considerable time to develop and cannotbe easily duplicated by the competitors (De Wulf et al., 2001).GratitudeGratitude is defined in psychology literature as ―emotional benefits received, accompanied by a desire toreciprocate‖ (Emmons and McCullough, 2004). Feelings of gratitude occurs when people perceive thatthey have received some help which has some value to them, it has incurred some cost to the benefactorand the help has been offered with benevolent intentions and given gratuitously rather than social normsor ulterior motives (Mc Cullough et al., 2001). Although a few researchers have identified gratitude as a bidimensional construct (‗affect‟ as well as „conation‟) (Tesser, Gatewood & Driver, 1968; Wood, 2008;Palmatier, 2009), yet extant psychology and sociology literature have consensus about gratitude being“affect” (Oratpray, Clore & Collins, 1987; Benzev, 2000; and Emmons, 2004). Therefore, for the presentwork, gratitude has been considered as an “affect”Social investments and GratitudeIt has been found that when people get social investments, it would result in positive social reinforcementamong them (Luthans and Stajkovic, 2000). Similarly, receiving a personal communication basedinvestment would result in fulfilment of their desire for a friendly and close relationship, which is apositive feeling in nature. When people get non price based investments, they memorize them for longerperiod of time (Thaller, 1998). Similarly, when people get preferential treatments, it would result in