Evaluating the Impact of Preferential Treatment: The Mediating Role of Customer Entitlement and Its Consequences

Abstract

Preferential treatment of selected customers is one of the strategies employed by companies that aim to implement relationship marketing. The objective of the study is to determine the impact of customer entitlements on complaint behavior and customer incivility. The quantitative method was used to test the model. Total 350 questionnaires were distributed out of which 293 were received from respondents. Convenience sampling technique was used to collect data from customers. SPSS and AMOS software were used for data analysis. Demographic analysis and reliability analysis were performed using SPSS. CFA and SEM were used on AMOS software. The results show that customer entitlement has mediating role between preferential treatment, complaint behavior and customer incivility. Our findings specifically show that receiving preferential treatment can improve consumer satisfaction. Furthermore, the fact that we found a considerably higher degree of satisfaction in the non-unique over-reward condition than in the unique over-reward situation indicates that the way preferred treatment is allocated influences customer satisfaction.