A Rose by Any Other Name: an Examination of the Relationship between Satisfaction and Service Loyalty

The purpose of this paper was to demonstrate empirically that attitudinal loyalty and satisfaction are divergent concepts. The results of this paper indicate that attitudinal loyalty is satisfaction driven and that satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty are related but divergent concepts. However had the analysis relied exclusively on correlation or exploratory factor analysis the empirical results would suggest convergent validity. Additionally attitudinal loyalty measures correlated as well with satisfaction measures as they did with each other. The satisfaction measures were more strongly associated with other satisfaction measures than they were with attitudinal loyalty measures. This paper contains a warning for researchers who rely solely on correlation and exploratory factor analysis for measuring divergent validity. Additionally it provides a research agenda for future research into the satisfaction loyalty relationship, which must incorporate additional dimensions of service loyalty.