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

purchase intention. Only when customers have enough of choice and they are willing and happy topurchase from certain seller, these customers have purchase intentions.It has been found that when people recognize the feelings of gratitude, this would generate attributionsabout the motive of the benefactor. This would increase the intentions to repay the benefactor by engagingin reciprocal behaviour based on these feelings of gratitude (Goei and Boster, 2005). It was also found thatfeelings of gratitude would increase customer‘s share of wallet in purchase as well as sellers performancein terms of total sales volume (Palmatier, 2009). Based on that, we hypothesize thatH 4) Customer gratitude would results in customer purchase intentionsGratitude and customer loyaltyCustomer loyalty has been considered to be one of the main keys to achieving company success andsustainability over time (Keating et al., 2003; Reichheld and Aspinall, 1993). It is customer‘sdemonstration of faithful adherence to the institution. At the core, there are customer‘s attitude and repeatpatronage as two separate constructs that build the loyalty relationship (Dick and Basu, 1994). It has beenfound that there is no straightforward relationship between a customer‘s attitude and repeat patronage(Dick and Basu, 1994). Low attitude can be combined with high patronage behaviour, high attitude withlow patronage behaviour, and both attitude and repeat patronage can be found high or low. These fourpossible combinations result in four quadrants, that reflect four types of loyalty: true loyalty (high attitudecombined with high patronage behaviour), latent loyalty (high attitude with low patronage behaviour),spurious loyalty (low attitude with high patronage behaviour), and disloyalty (low attitude with lowpatronage behaviour). Thus, the repeat patronage behaviour of different customers within a company‘scustomer base is not a mere function of their attitude. As Dick and Basu (1994) suggest, customers differin their type of loyalty relationship, and it is likely that customer characteristics help the researcherunderstand how the loyalty relationship differs from one customer to another. Considering that theintegrative approach of Dick and Basu (1994) suggests loyalty as a general term refers to both attitudinaland behavioural element. The behavioural element might or might not have a long term relationalorientation, yet attitudinal loyalty has a long term relational orientation (Dick and Basu, 1994). Therefore,for the present work, attitudinal loyalty has been taken as a measure of long term orientation ofconsumers.On receiving a benefit, people feel sense of thankfulness, gratefulness and appreciation. These feelings ofgratitude are although ephemeral by nature, yet become the basis of long term relationships. It is arguedthat the recipient of the benefit after realizing these one or other factors (the act done by the benefactor is