Scratch my back and I will scratch yours: the impact of other customers on customer citizenship behaviour

Marketing researchers have extensively studied the antecedents of customer citizenship behavior. However, what is yet to be examined is the influence of other customers on customer citizenship behavior. Although previous research makes significant contributions, additional insights might be acquired if customer citizenship behavior is examined within the social context of other customers. The purpose of this research is thus to examine the extent to which customer citizenship behavior is shaped by social context, more specifically, citizenship behavior by other customers. The model we developed was inspired by social informational processing theory and interpersonal influence theory. In particular, we argue that other customer citizenship behavior toward the customer and the firm will affect informational influence such as attractiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise as well as normative influence such as moral obligation and social identity, which in turn affect customer citizenship behavior toward the customer and the firm. The setting for the study was an on-line shopping mall. Respondents consisted of 119 undergraduate and MBA students majoring in business administration. To test our hypotheses, we estimated a structural equation model using SmartPLS. The results provide support for most of hypothesized relationships.