Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
1018047 | Journal of Business Research | 2010 | 6 Pages |
We develop a more comprehensive measure of discretionary, extra-role behaviors that customers engage in to help a company. While customer helping behaviors have been studied previously, attempts to develop valid measures have been limited. We use the validation process for the Organizational Citizenship Behavior scale as a model to develop and validate a new scale measuring a comprehensive range of customer helping behaviors. We identify multiple dimensions of customer helping behaviors that are engaged in by the same customers, driven by the same antecedents, and collectively form a helping behaviors scale. Using student samples and customers of a non-profit organization, we demonstrate a consistent scale structure, reliability, and nomological and external validity. We present two variations of the scale, one for for-profit companies and one for non-profit organizations. This scale is intended to be used as a dependent behavioral measure to enable researchers to capture multiple customer helping behaviors.