WHO AM I? CUSTOMER IDENTIFICATION: A QUANTITATIVE SYNTHESIS

Abstract

Customer identification defined as ‘customer’s perceived oneness with a company/brand’ is receiving increased attention in marketing. Despite the critical role customer identification plays, there is a lack of comprehensive work explicating the antecedents, outcomes, and possible boundary conditions of customer identification. The current study fills this gap in the literature by conducting a meta-analysis that synthesizes studies conducted over the past 25 years. The meta-analysis includes 167 independent samples (N = 87,538 customers) from which 24 antecedents and 7 outcomes of customer identification are identified and tested. Significant antecedents are grouped into two categories: company/brand antecedents and customer antecedents. Findings provide support to the critical role customer identification plays in driving outcomes such as loyalty, willingness-to-pay, word-of-mouth, resilience, and company financial performance, which all are important for marketer’s success. Various research context and measurement method moderators are studied to test the robustness of antecedents-customer identification and customer identification-outcomes relationships. In addition to the bivariate analysis conducted, a meta-analytic structural equation model is proposed for the purpose of testing a causal model of customer identification. The meta-analytic model demonstrates a relational-based path that is complementary to the conventional identity-based path of customer identification. Findings provide several theoretical and practical contributions.