Potential effects of psychological reactant consumers on relationships marketing programmes

Denis Darpy (1) , Isabelle Prim-Allaz (2)

1 DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management
2 COACTIS - COnception de l'ACTIon en Situation

This conceptual article presents the current criticisms to relationship marketing and important concepts developed in the psychology to understand consumer reactance toward services packaged as formal contracts. A first part presents the numerous questions that researches are raising about the willingness of people to commit to services. A second part shows that psychological reactance, already studied in the context of non product choice, is an interesting concept to revisit the relationship marketing paradigm: are all customers willing to commit to a service or are they forced against their own freedom? The last section develops an integrative conceptual framework of the different concepts introduced in this research.

Mots clés: Psychological reactance; relationship marketing; long term commitment; relationship orientation

Domaines: Gestion et management

Denis Darpy, Isabelle Prim-Allaz. Potential effects of psychological reactant consumers on relationships marketing programmes. EIASM Workshop on new directions in relationship marketing, Nov 2006, Brussels, Belgium. ⟨halshs-00470607⟩