Emotional connection and customer orientation as moderators in improving the customer satisfaction–behavioral intention link: A moderated moderation service model

Customer engagement is one of the significant operational and quality practices service providers use to build service experiential relationships with customers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role emotional connection and customer orientation play in customer relationship building. A quantitative survey method is carried out among 515 self-reported active members at a single fast-growing non-denominational faith-based organization in Southwestern United States. Using a hierarchical multiple regression to evaluate our research model, we find relationship satisfaction is positively associated with customers’ behavioral intention in doing business with a service firm, while emotional connection shows no moderating effect on such a relationship. However, we found a significant three-way interaction effect of relationship satisfaction, emotional connection, and customer orientation on behavioral intentions. Customer orientation strengthens and fortifies the relationship between satisfaction and behavioral intentions for customers with high emotional connection than for customers with low emotional connection. The focus on customer orientation and emotional connection provides a framework that can assist service firms develop quality operational strategies that target the emotions and feelings of customers to value the relationship while supporting service employees with quality operational practices and customer orientated activities to better manage customers.