LAUSR

Since customer loyalty is key for enterprises to gain core competence, achieving a better understanding of the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is critical. The inconsistency with respect to customer satisfaction–loyalty relationships across studies has attracted our attention. This study attempts to determine the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty despite mixed results obtained by previous studies based on a proposed meta-analysis approach. Here, we draw from 195 individual studies to conduct a meta-analysis aggregating empirical findings. Our results revealed that customer satisfaction strongly correlates with customer loyalty, and we draw conclusions on the performance of customer loyalty. Finally, satisfaction can increase customers’ trust, word-of-mouth, recommendation, commitment, repurchase intention, and continuous intention and can decrease switching intention. These findings provide empirical support for several previous studies and further clarify the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty, and the proposed meta-analysis approach is effective in resolving the contradiction between two terminologies among the previous studies. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications for practice and further research.