Date of Award

Fall 2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)

Department

Marketing and Analysis

First Advisor

Barry Babin

Abstract

The dissertation explores the relationship between customer affective commitment and freeloading behavior. Consumer freeloading results when a consumer takes advantage of a system or market procedures in a way that allows him or her to obtain benefits from a value proposition with no or reduced monetary costs. Thus, the freeloading consumer works the value equation in his/her favor at the expense of the marketer and/or other consumers. In addition to examining the point of view of the consumer performing the unethical behavior, the dissertation also examines the impact of such behavior on a third party observer. How do loyal consumers (versus not so loyal consumers) react in the face of obvious opportunism against the firm they identify with (or do not identify with)? Justice sensitivity, a personality variable that predicts when and how people react to witnessed or experienced injustice, is hypothesized to moderate the relationship between self-conscious emotions, namely guilt and empathy, and observer's and perpetrator's affective commitment.

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