Making the Customer-Brand Relationship Sustainable: The Different Effects of Psychological Contract Breach Types on Customer Citizenship Behaviours

Hongyan Liu, Jinglan Yang and Xiaoxi Chen
Additional contact information
Hongyan Liu: School of Management, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China
Jinglan Yang: School of Management, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China
Xiaoxi Chen: School of Management, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-15

Abstract: Customer citizenship behaviours are important for a sustainable customer-brand relationship, yet little is known about the effect of psychological contract breach on citizenship behaviours. From the perspective of psychological contract theory, this research examined the impact of psychological contract breaches on customer citizenship behaviours through the mediating mechanism of psychological contract violation in the customer-brand relationship. Experiments were used to assess the effect of two types of psychological contract breaches on customer citizenship behaviours. The results show that the negative effect of a relational contract breach differs between the dimensions of citizenship behaviours. A relational contract breach has direct and indirect negative effects on recommendation behaviours and helping behaviours, but it does not affect voice behaviours. A transactional contract breach directly and negatively influences recommendation behaviours, but it has no effect on voice behaviours. A transactional contract breach indirectly increases helping behaviours through psychological contract violation. Psychological contract violation partially mediates the effect of a transactional contract breach on customer recommendation behaviours and fully mediates the effect of a relational contract breach on helping behaviours. These findings generate managerial implications for firms aiming to maintain sustainable customer-brand relationships.

Keywords: psychological contract breach; psychological contract violation; customer recommendation behaviour; voice behaviour; customer helping behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/630/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/630/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:2:p:630-:d:308886

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().