Saint Mary's University

About: Saint Mary's University is a education organization based out in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Stars. The organization has 1931 authors who have published 4993 publications receiving 143226 citations.

The Impact of Brand Commitment on Loyalty to Retail Service Brands

Abstract: This paper incorporates the developing body of literature in relationship marketing to the study of brand loyalty. Relationship marketing literature has established that customer commitment is a central, complex construct consisting of at least an affective component and a continuance component. This study examined the extent to which affective and continuance commitment serve as mediators of the brand satisfaction—loyalty intentions relationship. The study found that, in two retail service brand settings, the two components of commitment fully mediate the relationship between brand satisfaction and both repurchase intentions and advocacy intentions. In addition, the study found that affective commitment to the brand was strongly and positively related to both repurchase intentions for the brand and willingness to act as an advocate on behalf of the brand. Continuance commitment was at best only weakly but positively related to repurchase intentions, but negatively related to advocacy intentions for the brand. Resume Le present article combine les publications de plus en plus nombreuses relatives au marketing cible et l'etude de la fidelite a la marque. Les publications relatives au marketing cible ont etabli que l'engagement du client est un concept central et complexe qui comprend au moins une composante affective et une composante de continuation. Cette etude examine dans quelle mesure l'engagement affectif et l'engagement de continuation mediatisent la satisfaction par rapport a la marque—rapport d'intentions de fidelite. L'etude revele que dans deux contextes de service de detail de marque, les deux composantes d'engagement mediatisent completement le rapport entre la satisfaction par rapport a la marque d'une part, les intentions de rachat et les intentions de promotion d'autre part. Par ailleurs, l'engagement affectif a la marque est fortement et positivement relie aux intentions de rachat de la marque et a la volonte de recommander et de defendre la marque. L'engagement de continuation est au mieux relie uniquement, faiblement mais positivement aux intentions de rachat. Cependant, il est negativement relie aux intentions de recommandation pour la marque.

How commitment both enables and undermines marketing relationships

Abstract: Purpose – The relationship marketing literature puts forward that customer commitment is central to the development of marketing relationships. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which two components of customer commitment (affective commitment and continuance commitment) both enhance and undermine customer loyalty.Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical model was developed to determine the extent to which the components of commitment both served as mediators of and interacted with one another in the relationship between service quality and switching and advocacy intentions. This model was examined in a survey of customers in three service settings; financial services, retail‐grocery services and telecommunications services.Findings – Commitment serves as a partial mediator of the service quality‐loyalty relationship. It was also found that affective commitment made a negative impact on switching intentions and a positive impact on advocacy intentions in all three service settin...

Divergent effects of transformational and passive leadership on employee safety.

Abstract: The authors concurrently examined the impact of safety-specific transformational leadership and safety-specific passive leadership on safety outcomes. First, the authors demonstrated via confirmatory factor analysis that safety-specific transformational leadership and safety-specific passive leadership are empirically distinct constructs. Second, using hierarchical regression, the authors illustrated, contrary to a stated corollary of transformational leadership theory (B. M. Bass, 1997), that passive leadership contributes incrementally to the prediction of organizationally relevant outcomes, in this case safety-related variables, beyond transformational leadership alone. Third, further analyses via structural equation modeling showed that both transformational and passive leadership have opposite effects on safety climate and safety consciousness, and these variables, in turn, predict safety events and injuries. Implications for research and application are discussed.

Food webs: a plea for parasites

Abstract: Parasites have the capacity to regulate host populations and may be important determinants of community structure, yet they are usually neglected in studies of food webs. Parasites can provide much of the information on host biology, such as diet and migration, that is necessary to construct accurate webs. Because many parasites have complex life cycles that involve several different hosts, and often depend on trophic interactions for transmission, parasites provide complementary views of web structure and dynamics. Incorporation of parasites in food webs can substantially after baste web properties, Including connectance, chain length and proportions of top and basal species, and can allow the testing of specific hypotheses related to food-web dynamics.