Antecedents and consequences of liking in retail service relationships in China and Greece

The marketing literature has provided a limited examination of the concept of liking, and even this has mainly occurred within business-to-business or advertising contexts. In this paper, the authors propose a model of the intervening role of liking in the customer-service provider relationship in two countries, China and Greece. The antecedents of liking include three key service constructs, namely customer education, customer participation, and service quality. The outputs of liking are proposed to be affective trust and affective commitment, which in turn influence (behavioral) loyalty. The research model is tested using samples from China (N = 277) and from Greece (N = 306). The model is largely supported in both samples. Therefore, the authors suggest that liking in financial services has an important role in the customer-service provider relationship. Implications for international businesses are discussed.