How does customer self-construal moderate CRM value creation chain?

•Constructing the chain from customer value to organization value at individual customer level.•Investigating the moderating effect of self-construal in such a chain.•Collecting data points from China in the context of mobile data services.•The positive relationship between customer loyalty and duration is moderated by customer’s interdependent self-construal.•The positive relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is moderated by independent self-construal.

Most of the existing literature on CRM value chain creation has focused on the effect of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty on customer profitability. In contrast, little has been studied about the CRM value creation chain at individual customer level and the role of self-construal (i.e., independent self-construal and interdependent self-construal) in such a chain. This research aims to construct the chain from customer value to organization value (i.e., customer satisfaction → customer loyalty → patronage behavior) and investigate the moderating effect of self-construal. To test the hypotheses suggested by our conceptual framework, we collected 846 data points from China in the context of mobile data services. The results show that customer’s self-construal can moderate the relationship chain from customer satisfaction to customer loyalty to relationship maintenance and development. This implies firms should tailor their customer strategies based on different self-construal features.