Comparing customer loyalty intentions using trust, satisfaction, and commitment of online MBA students versus traditional MBA students

Relationship Marketing refers to all marketing activities directed toward establishing, developing and maintaining successful relationship exchanges. This emphasis on relationships constitutes a major shift in marketing theory and practice. (Morgan & Hunt, 1994) An in-depth understanding of the loyalty intention distinctions between online MBA students and traditional MBA students will provide valuable insight on profitability, and open new paths to profitability growth for educational institutions. (Reichheld, 2003); The purpose of this study was to use Relationship Marketing Theory to compare empirically customer loyalty intentions among online MBA students and traditional MBA students by studying three metrics: trust, satisfaction and commitment. Further, drawing from the work of Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner and Gremler (2002), this study investigated whether the relationships between satisfaction and commitment serve as key mediators of loyalty intentions.; The results of this study concluded that trust plays an important role in motivating commitment, satisfaction and loyalty intentions for both traditional and online MBA students. The research results also support the Trust-Commitment Theory of Relationship Marketing (Morgan & Hunt, 1994), revealing that the higher the trust levels of online and traditional students the higher their commitment to higher educational institutions. The results from this study indicated satisfaction itself indirectly (mediated model) and directly (non-mediated model) motivates loyalty intentions for both traditional and online MBA students. However, satisfaction was tested empirically, and while found to be a key mediating factor in determining commitment for traditional MBA students, it was not a highly predictive factor of online MBA students. Commitment was also found to mediate the effects of loyalty intentions for traditional MBA students. Finally, a comparison between students from traditional and online institutions indicated the behaviors of traditional MBA students and online MBA students are similar from invariance analysis. However, the results from this study indicated that online MBA students scored slightly higher than traditional MBA students in in the trust and commitment categories. Online educational administrators may have more confidence to fine-tune core service strategies and relationship customization in their relationship marketing plans.; Based on the results from this study, administrators can achieve the goal of enhancing student loyalty, both within traditional and online institutions, by developing key customer relationship attributes: trust, commitment and satisfaction. Attention to these focal points will lead to significantly improved competitive advantage.