The Impact of Switching Barriers on Customer Loyalty in Professional Service Contexts

Customer loyalty has been treated as an important source of sustained competitive advantages to a company´s continued survival and to strong future growth. Customer satisfaction is known to be the key antecedent to customer loyalty. In recent service management literature, researchers have found the impact of customer satisfaction on customer loyalty might vary under different switching barrier conditions. However, switching barriers and their importance in professional service contexts have received little in-depth attention. This paper aims to examine the impact of switching barriers as a potential moderator on the complex interrelationships among the antecedents and consequences of customer satisfaction in professional service contexts. The empirical dataset, which covers 160 life insurance accounts in Taiwan, is analyzed by moderated regression analysis to test the proposed hypotheses. The main findings of this study show that the switching barriers do have a moderating effect on customer loyalty. Therefore, in addition to customer satisfaction, switching barriers play a crucial role in winning customer loyalty