Purpose

This study explores the impact of brand's psychological contract violation on customers' spurious loyalty, via the mediating effects of customers' brand commitments (affective commitment, calculative commitment and normative commitment) and the moderating effects of justification for violation and nostalgia proneness in the link of psychological contract violation and three commitments.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on 427 valid responses collected from paper- and web-based survey questionnaires, a total of 21 hypotheses were tested by adopting a structural equation model, hierarchical regression technique and slope analyses.

Findings

The result indicates negative effects of psychological contract violation on customers' attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty via affective commitment and normative commitment, as well as positive effects of psychological contract violation on customers' attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty via calculative commitment. It explains the reason why some loyal customers show spurious loyalty after being psychological contract violated. Meanwhile, it also supports different moderating impacts of justification for violation and nostalgia proneness in these relationships.

Originality/value

This study underscores the importance of calculative commitment in mitigating the adverse effect of psychological contract violation on customers' loyalty. Also, managerial implications are put forward to prevent loyal customers from switching to a worse loyalty stage after being violated.

中文翻译：

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心理契约违反在塑造虚假忠诚中的作用

目的

本研究通过顾客品牌承诺（情感承诺、计算承诺和规范承诺）的中介作用以及违反正当性和怀旧倾向在以下环节的调节作用，探讨品牌心理契约违反对顾客虚假忠诚的影响。心理契约违背和三项承诺。

设计/方法/方法

基于从纸质和网络调查问卷中收集到的 427 份有效答复，采用结构方程模型、层次回归技术和斜率分析，总共检验了 21 个假设。

发现

结果表明，心理契约违背通过情感承诺和规范承诺对顾客态度忠诚和行为忠诚产生负面影响，心理契约违背通过计算承诺对顾客态度忠诚和行为忠诚产生积极影响。它解释了一些忠诚客户在心理契约被违反后表现出虚假忠诚的原因。同时，它也支持这些关系中的违规理由和怀旧倾向的不同调节影响。

原创性/价值

本研究强调了计算承诺在减轻违反心理契约对客户忠诚度的不利影响方面的重要性。此外，还提出了管理含义，以防止忠诚客户在受到侵犯后转向更差的忠诚度阶段。