“The effect of the legitimacy perception of the TMT/customer-base gender match on customer commitment”
Dissertation Msc. Double Degree Advanced International Business and Management
Derek Quinten Leijten Prinsengracht 173-2 1015 DS
Email: derekleijten@hotmail.com Tel: +31634565856
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen: s1772651
Newcastle University Business School: B4017388
Supervisors:
Dr. A. A. J. van Hoorn Dr. J. Kimmitt
Word count: 14.950
Final submission: Thursday 30th of April 2015, 4 PM UK time / 5 PM Dutch time
Abstract
This exploratory research aims to explore whether there exists a relationship between the customer legitimacy perception of a firm based on the TMT/customer-base gender match, and customer commitment in terms of the customer (re)purchase intentions. This research applies a scenario approach to examine this relationship. On the one hand, firm A has a high TMT/customer-base gender match. On the other hand, firm B has a low TMT/customer-base gender match. Subsequently, this study examines whether the customers’ legitimacy perception of a firm – based on these two opposite TMT/customer-base gender match scenarios – affects the customers’ preference to rather (re)purchase their products at one of those firms. The findings suggest that customer commitment in terms of reported (re)purchase intentions does significantly deviate from ‘no preference’ in favour of firm A. Namely, the high TMT/customer-base gender match increases the customers’ legitimacy perception of a firm through improved customer trust in the firm, customer psychological commitment to the firm, and customer satisfaction after buying at that firm. This increases the customers’
willingness to build up and maintain a long-term customer-firm relationship, which can be achieved by (re)purchasing their products at that firm with the high TMT/customer-base gender match. Thereby, the findings suggest that this ‘deviation of the (re)purchase intentions from no preference towards firm A’ can be explained for a significant part by so-called
‘customer acceptance’, because customers expect this firm to act corporately responsible which in turn increases their (re)purchase intentions at that firm. This study contributes to the existing literature because the relationship between these particular constructs has not been studied before. However, since the results appear to be highly significant, this research is highly relevant for firms who must hire a new TMT member and who want to optimize the level of their customer commitment. Thereby, this study is a starting point for future researchers to further elaborate on this relation by applying an explanatory research design.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Mr. Andre van Hoorn from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and Mr.
Jonathan Kimmitt from Newcastle University for their guidance and support during the writing of this dissertation. I would also like to thank all respondents who completed my questionnaire appropriately.
Table of contents
1. Introduction………....Page 6 2. Background……….Page 9 3. Theory and Hypotheses……….Page 10
3.1. Organizational gender legitimacy……….Page 10 3.2. The effect of gender legitimacy on customer commitment…………...Page 12 3.2.1. Component 1: Customer trust……….Page 14 3.2.2. Component 2: Customer psychological commitment……….Page 16 3.2.3. Component 3: Customer satisfaction………..Page 18 3.2.4. Hypothesis on the effect of (perceived) gender legitimacy
on customer commitment………Page 20 3.3. Customer acceptance as a mediator of the relationship between
gender legitimacy and customer commitment………..Page 21 4. Data and Method………....Page 23 4.1. Sample………...Page 23 4.2. Approach and measures…….………Page 24
4.2.1. Legitimacy of the TMT/customer-base gender match:
A scenario approach………Page 24 4.2.2. The three components of customer commitment………Page 25 4.2.2.1. Customer trust………..Page 26 4.2.2.2. Customer psychological commitment………..Page 26 4.2.2.3. Customer satisfaction………...Page 27 4.2.3. Customer acceptance………...Page 28 4.3. Statistical Analysis……….Page 29 5. Results………..Page 31
5.1. Sample characteristics………Page 31 5.2. Results………Page 32 5.2.1. Results Hypothesis 1………..………...Page 32 5.2.2. Results Hypothesis 2……….………Page 32 6. Discussion………Page 34 7. Limitations………..Page 37 8. Implications for future research ………..Page 41 9. Conclusion………..….Page 45 References………...Page 46 Appendix….………Page 55 a. Appendix 1………...Page 55
b. Appendix 2………....Page 56 c. Appendix 3………....Page 57 d. Appendix 4………....Page 59 e. Appendix 5………....Page 64 f. Appendix 6………Page 66 g. Appendix 7………Page 68
1. Introduction
There are still fundamental relations that have not been studied yet in the popular organizational gender legitimacy field of research, that might be of considerable importance for organizational success. Recently, the effects of organizational gender diversity on firm performance have been examined (Hambrick & Mason, 1984; Finkelstein & Hambrick, 1996;
Buchholtz et al., 2005). Considering the statement of previous studies that the top management team (TMT) gender composition has substantial consequences for the functioning of a firm, it is interesting to find the appropriate gender composition for TMT’s (Hambrick & Mason, 1984; Finkelstein & Hambrick, 1996; Buchholtz et al., 2005). For example, Cox (1991) and Campbell and Minguez-Vera (2008) prove that gender diverse TMTs improve the degree of innovation and creativity. Additionally, Darmadi (2013) found that female representation in TMTs involves a broader decision making perspective, and they are able to target different customers. Although these studies suggest that an appropriate gender composition of a TMT is important, they merely focus on the consequences of the TMT gender diversity on the internal TMT dynamics.
The other side of the literature – which builds upon the institutional legitimacy literature – examines the effects of how the TMT gender diversity affects the external dynamics of a firm in terms of the organizational gender legitimacy. The organizational gender legitimacy literature stresses that the gender composition of a TMT should not merely be composed in order to optimize the internal TMT dynamics; it should also be based on the gender diversity of the external stakeholders, in order to achieve a high organizational gender legitimacy (Tsui et al., 1992; Lee & Peccei, 2007). Since gender (dis)similarities are an important determinant of social identification and acceptance, this research applies gender (dis)similarities as measurement criteria for the degree of organizational legitimacy (Ashforth
& Mael, 1989). Previous studies on organizational legitimacy state that it is important that generalized perceptions and assumptions of customers and employees towards the firm should be desirable, proper and appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs and definitions (Suchman, 1995).
Previous studies already focused on employees as the firms’ external stakeholder, to improve the employees’ organizational commitment by optimizing the firm-employee gender legitimacy (Lee & Peccei, 2007). However, firms do not operate in a vacuum. Besides to internal stakeholders such as employees, firms are subject to pressures and expectations that arise from external stakeholders: customers. The organizational gender legitimacy varies,
depending on the perspective of the stakeholder. For example, if the majority of a firms’
customer-base is female, but if the majority of a firms’ overall workforce is male, a discrepancy is likely to emerge between the various stakeholders’ expectations and the actual TMT gender diversity. Only few studies have examined the influence of organizational gender legitimacy on customer commitment. Since customer commitment is a main predecessor of firm success, this current research examines whether customer commitment is affected by the firm-customer gender legitimacy (De Wulf et al., 2001; Park et al., 2013).
Previous studies that focused on the overall firm-customer legitimacy match, mainly based this customer-firm legitimacy on the product quality or image; whether customers could socially identify and therefore commit with firms who sell products of a certain quality or with a certain image (Bloemer & de Ruytkerk, 1998; Garbarino & Johnson, 1999). However, the few existing studies that based this customer-firm legitimacy on the customer-firm gender legitimacy match, focused on how an organizations’ frontline service staff is able to detect and understand the existing customer needs, and their ability to anticipate on those customer needs based on the gender (dis)similarities of those frontline employees with their customer base (Mathies & Burford, 2011). They found that the frontline employees’ ability to anticipate on the customer needs is influenced by the gender (dis)similarities with their customers, which subsequently stimulates the customer (re)purchase intentions (Mathies & Burford, 2011). However, in this gender-legitimacy field of research, the literature lacks information on whether the customer commitment in terms of customer (re)purchase intentions is affected by the perceived legitimacy of the TMT/customer-base gender match in particular. However, firms should align their TMT gender diversity with the customer-base gender diversity to achieve a high TMT-customer gender match. Namely, discrepancy occurs when the factual TMT/customer-base gender match does not correspond to the customers’ expectations.
However, congruency occurs when these factual matches do correspond to the customers’
expectations. Such discrepancies and congruencies determine how customers accept a TMT to be legitimate (Arch & Craske, 2008). It is relevant to operationalize this gender-legitimacy in terms of the TMT/customer-base gender match. Namely, Wang et al. (2014) prove that the TMT gender composition is an important determinant for the observable organizational legitimacy, since the TMT composition functions as a signal and is used by external constituents (customers) to infer the reputation and thereby the quality of a firm. Therefore, this is a reason to investigate whether there exists an effect between the perceived legitimacy of the TMT/customer-base gender match and customer commitment as well. Consequently, the existing literature lacks available information on whether customer commitment might be
influenced by the customers’ legitimacy perception of a firm based on the TMT/customer-base gender match. Therefore, this research is a relevant contribution to this field of research because it broadens the scope of the existing literature. The aim of this study is mainly exploratory; to examine whether there is a relation between the customers’ legitimacy perception of a firm based on the TMT/customer-base gender match, and customer commitment in terms of (re)purchase intentions. This results in the following research question:
How does the customers’ legitimacy perception of a firm – based on the TMT/customer-base gender match – affect customer commitment?
If the results of this study suggest that these constructs are indeed related; this research might be an inspiration for future studies to further elaborate on this topic by applying more explanatory research models. However, if the results of this study confirm this relationship, this research is relevant already for every firm with a TMT emphasizing optimizing their customer commitment. At some point, every TMT faces departing members who should be replaced. If the results of this research confirm this relationship, firms should identify their customer-base gender diversity and take this into account in their process of hiring a man or a woman for a TMT position. This improves customer trust, customer psychological commitment and customer satisfaction with a firm which subsequently improves customer commitment in terms of customer (re)purchase intentions (Pan et al., 2012).
This thesis is structured as follows. The next chapter provides background information on the importance and consequences of the TMT gender diversity on firm success, to place this research in a broader context. Thereafter, the main theoretical arguments, research question and hypotheses are outlined in the theoretical section. Then, the used methods are presented, followed by the empirical results. Subsequently, it is discussed how these findings relate to the existing literature and whether the empirical findings support the research question and hypotheses. Then, the strengths and limitations on this research are discussed.
This research ends with a conclusion where the contributions are presented and where implications for future research are given.
2. Background
Nowadays, firms have TMT members that are diverse in the field of ethical background, age and gender. The consequences of women in TMTs became an important field of study since the female emancipation rose significantly the past decades (Helfat et al., 2006). The number of women with managerial ambitions increased significantly due to the feminization (Dezsö
& Ross, 2012). Women significantly entered positions that used to be occupied by men (Dezso & Ross, 2012). Nevertheless, women are still substantially underrepresented at the top of the corporate hierarchy; both in the boardroom as in the top management (Daily et al., 1999; Helfat et al., 2006; Hillman et al., 2007). The examination of those TMTs represents a significant area of research in the strategic management literature, since a well-functioning TMT is an important precursor to organizational success (Hambrick & Mason, 1984;
Finkelstein & Hambrick, 1996; Buchholtz et al., 2005). Much previous research examined the optimal TMT composition that achieves the highest firm performance. TMT members can be homogeneous or heterogeneous in terms of age, experience, tenure, origin, education and gender. Murray (1989) found that TMT group heterogeneity improves firm performance. In contrast, Colbert et al. (2014) used direct measures of personality and leadership. They found that a mean level of conscientiousness among TMT members was related to lagged indicators of organizational performance.
Previous studies reveal gender diversity as an important characteristic of a TMT composition (Nousiainen et al., 2013). Previous scholars advanced multiple arguments praising the benefits of gender diversity in TMTs. Krishnan and Park (2005) stress the benefit of a 'feeling' cognitive style. Such a cognitive style stresses organizational harmony and values, stimulates information- and resource sharing, ease in the process of conflict solutions, and demonstrates higher degrees of democratic leadership (Hurst et al., 1989; Eagly &
Johnson, 1990; Earley & Mosakowski, 2000). Thereby, women in TMTs are seen as 'tough' because they overcame several challenges before they obtained their function in a hierarchy that was originally dominated by men. These accomplishments gave women psychological advantages and highly considered exposures in the business environment (Hambrick &
Mason, 1984; Krishnan & Park, 2005). Gender diverse TMTs also enhance the degree of innovation and creativity (Cox, 1991; Campbell & Minguez-Vera, 2008). It can be concluded from these previous researches, that a TMTs' gender composition might have substantial consequences for the functioning of a firm.
3. Theory and Hypotheses
The previous studies underline the importance of a well-constructed TMT in terms of gender diversity. However, these studies merely focus on the consequences of the TMT gender diversity on the internal TMT dynamics. This current study examines the effect of TMT gender diversity on the functioning of a firm from another perspective; by focusing on how TMT gender diversity is perceived by another major external stakeholder. There are various external stakeholders to cope with who need to be satisfied. This research focuses on the customer base as the external stakeholder group to cope with in terms of how a certain gender diverse TMT affects the customer commitment in terms of their (re)purchase behavior.
Especially, this study focuses on how the customers’ legitimacy perception of a firm – based on the TMT/customer-base gender match, affects customer commitment. Therefore, the customer-firm legitimacy perception based on a TMT/customer-base gender match will be defined first and will be further elucidated. Subsequently, the customer commitment chapter discusses why customer commitment is such an important predecessor of organizational success. Then, it is argued that customer commitment is build up from three different pillars:
customer trust, customer psychological commitment and customer satisfaction (Pan et al., 2012). It will be discussed how customer trust, customer psychological commitment, and customer satisfaction are likely to be influenced by the legitimacy level of a TMT/customer- base gender match. Subsequently, it will be discussed how customer trust, customer psychological commitment, and customer satisfaction determine customer commitment in terms of the customer (re)purchase intentions. Eventually, it will be examined whether this relationship can be explained by the ‘customer acceptance’ of a firm – based on the legitimacy of the TMT/customer-base gender match – that it acts corporately responsible.
Consequently, this research theoretically connects the gender legitimacy literature with the customer commitment literature.
3.1. Organizational gender legitimacy
This research builds upon the organizational legitimacy definition of Suchman (1995): ‘An organization is legitimate when the generalized perceptions and assumptions of customers towards the firm are desirable, proper and appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs and definitions’. In the organizational legitimacy literature, a distinction is made between cognitive legitimacy, regulative legitimacy and normative legitimacy (Wang et al., 2014). Although previous scholars defined organizational legitimacy
differently, they mainly investigated whether the organizational structure and behaviour of the system meets the social and institutional rules, social norms and public value judgements (Li et al., 2010). Cognitive organizational legitimacy originates from the public cognition and perceptions on organizational behaviour and structure. Thereby, cognitive organizational legitimacy focuses on the close relationship of the organizational structure on the one hand, and of the product sales, the market performance, and the organizational image on the other hand (Li et al., 2014). Now, the gender diversity of a TMT is an important factor of such an organizational structure (Opstrup & Villadsen, 2015). Therefore, this is likely to form the customers’ legitimacy perception on a firm, which makes it an interesting topic for this study to investigate. Namely, the customers’ perception to accept a firm to be legitimate on social norms, values and beliefs, is for a substantive part determined by customer-firm gender identification in terms of gender (dis)similarities (Ashforth & Mael, 1989).
Since Li et al. (2010) found that cognitive legitimacy is not only determined by corporate recognition but also by corporate reputation, and since a legitimate composed TMT in particular is an important determinant of this organizational reputation, this research focuses particularly on the gender legitimacy of the TMT compared to the gender diversity of the customer base (Opstrup & Villadsen, 2015). Namely, Wang et al. (2014) state that observable organizational legitimacy characteristics – such as a representative TMT/customer base gender match – function as a signal and are used by those external constituents (customers) to infer the reputation and thereby the quality of a firm. Therefore, a well proportional TMT/customer-base gender match improves the customers’ perception of the TMT reputation and therefore the TMT legitimacy, which subsequently improves the overall organizational legitimacy. Consequently, this research operationalizes organizational legitimacy as cognitive legitimacy in terms of the degree to which the customer-base perceives these social norms and value judgements to be met, based on the gender legitimacy of the TMT/customer-base gender match.
This research argues that the TMT/customer-base gender match is perceived to be legitimate in the customer mind, when a congruency exists between the customer expectations on the TMT gender diversity on the one hand, and the factual TMT gender diversity on the other hand. This congruence is likely to be realized when gender similarities occur between TMT members and the customer base. According to the social gender identification literature and in particular to the customer-firm social identification theory of Ashforth and Mael (1989), people with the same gender share a natural feeling of connectedness. People believe that there are important similarities between them because gender is an important part of
one’s identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Tsui et al., 1992). Customers assume that their interests will be better satisfied when they can socially identify with a firm based on the TMT gender (dis)similarities, because they argue that a gender similar TMT is more able to empathize with their customer needs (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). Consequently, a TMT/customer-base gender match is perceived to be legitimate by the customer-base, when the TMT gender diversity is a representative reflection of the customer-base gender diversity.
This congruence is based on the combined findings of Ashforth and Mael (1989) and Suchman (1995); customers perceive and assume a firm to be more desirable, proper and appropriate (legitimate) when they can socially identify with a firm, which is more likely to occur when high customer-firm gender similarities exist, in terms of a high TMT/customer- base gender match.
3.2. The effect of gender legitimacy on customer commitment
This research examines the relationship between cognitive organizational gender legitimacy – in terms of how a certain TMT/customer-base gender match is perceived in the customers’
minds – and firm performance. In optimizing firm performance, organizations should satisfy the interests of various decisive external stakeholders such as employees or governments.
However, this current research focuses on satisfying the interests of the customer base to maximize customer commitment, since customer commitment is an important predecessor of organizational success (De Wulf et al., 2001; Park et al., 2013). De Wulf et al. (2001) suggest high customer commitment to be a key measure of strong and long-lasting customer-firm relationships, accompanied with purchases that lead to organizational success. Subsequently, Park et al. (2013) find those strong customer-firm relationships to be critical drivers of organizational future cash flows, which in turn impacts the firms’ financial performance and shareholder value.
The common approval that commitment can take on different forms has been the most leading development in the organizational behavior literature (Meyer et al., 2004; Lariviere et al., 2014). Allen and Meyer (1990) composed a three-dimension model of employee commitment. Their model suggests that employee commitment can be subdivided into affective (cognitive) commitment (emotional attachment in terms of ‘willing’ to build up and maintain the relationship), calculative (regulative) commitment (rational attachment in terms of ‘having’ to maintain the relationship), and normative commitment (moral attachment in terms of feelings that the relationship ‘should’ be maintained) (Gruen et al., 2000; Kelly, 2004). However, the vast majority in marketing studies considers customer commitment to be
single-dimensional as affective commitment. This operationalization is widely accepted and empirically supported in the organizational behavior literature (Bowen & Schoemaker, 1998;
Klein et al., 2009). Consequently, this current research also considers customer commitment as affective commitment as the customers ‘willingness’ to build up and maintain the customer-firm relationship, based on the TMT/customer-base gender match. Therefore, this research defines customer commitment as the customers’ belief that they conceive an on- going customer-firm relationship as important and that customers are ‘willing’ to build up and maintain that relationship in the future in terms of (re)purchasing their products at a certain firm. This definition highlights that this study operationalizes customer commitment as affective customer commitment, as it builds on the customers’ emotional attachment that they are ‘willing’ to build up and maintain the customer-firm relationship.
This research examines whether and how this customer commitment – in terms of how customers are ‘willing’ to build up and maintain a strong customer-firm relationship by (re)purchasing the products at a firm – is influenced by the customers’ legitimacy perception of the firm, based on the TMT/customer base gender match. This research emphasizes to capture customer commitment from a broad perspective by arguing that it comprises an entire process for customers to become firm committed (Goldring, 2010). Namely, this ‘willing’
process of customer commitment is either determined by the customers’ willingness to occasionally purchase the product (willing to build up a customer-firm relationship), the customers’ willingness to become a regular customer (willing to maintain a customer-firm relationship), and the customers’ willingness to put more effort and time to keep buying the product at a firm (willing to maintain a customer-firm relationship). To capture this entire customer commitment process, this study builds on the findings of Pan et al. (2012) that three different constructs determine the degree of customer commitment together: customer trust, customer psychological commitment and customer satisfaction. These constructs capture all the stages of the customer commitment process. Customer trust captures the degree to which customers are willing to occasionally purchase the product (Dabholkar & Sheng, 2012).
Customer psychological commitment captures the degree to which customers are willing to become a regular customer (Pan et al., 2012). Customer satisfaction captures the degree to which customers are willing to put in more effort and time to keep purchasing the products at a particular firm (Yulin et at., 2014). The next section further elucidates how these different constructs relate to the respective stages of the process of customers to become firm committed, as well as how these three components are affected by the customers’ legitimacy perception on the TMT/customer-base gender match.
3.2.1. Component 1: Customer trust
In this study, the first component of customer commitment is customer trust. Trust involves a consumers’ perceived reliability of a merchants’ brand, products, or services (Flavian et al., 2006). Trust can be defined as the confidence of one party in an exchange partners’ reliability and integrity (Morgan & Hunt, 1994).
It has been widely accepted in the literature, that high customer trust significantly influences the customer purchase intentions and therefore customer commitment (Gefen, 2000; Hong & Cho, 2011). Namely, high customer trust in a firm leads to beneficial customer attitudes towards that firm. This makes customers willing to build up a customer-firm relationship by occasionally purchase the products of that firm, because customers consider it as important that they can trust a firm to act reliable and with integrity (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Since this research operationalizes customer commitment as the customer’s willingness to build up and maintain a customer-firm relationship by purchasing products at a certain firm, and since customer trust precedes on these customer purchase intentions in terms of their willingness to build up such a relationship, this research argues that customer trust precedes on customer commitment. Especially, customer trust plays an important role in the first phase of the customer commitment process. Here, customers want to build up a customer-firm relationship by occasionally purchasing the products at that firm. In this build up phase, customers are mostly not committed yet to one firm to buy a certain product (Dabholkar & Sheng, 2012). These ‘floating’ customers are searching for particular beneficial firm characteristics that they perceive important in their consideration to trust a firm to act reliable and with integrity. In this phase where customers are ‘floating’, the customers’
confidence in a firm to act reliable and with integrity is a decisive factor in their decision process of where to buy their products (Anderson & Narus, 1990). Namely, floating customers perceive it to be important that they can trust a firm to perform actions that will result in positive outcomes for them as well as not take unexpected actions that result in negative outcomes (Anderson & Narus, 1990). For instance, when customers are floating – e.g. because they just begun purchasing a product – a strong brand name such as Apple is often a deciding factor in the customers’ purchase decision process, since a strong brand name gives the customer the confidence that the products are of a high quality (Albert & Merunka, 2013).
Various previous studies have examined the origin of the customers’ perception of a firm to act reliable and with integrity. Robinson (2007) found that customer trust rises when a firm totally disassociates itself from child labour, when they pay good wages and ensure good
working conditions and union representation. Additionally, Lee et al. (2015) found that customer trust improves when firms emphasize on executing environmentally sustainable production processes. These studies show that when these varying customers’ ideal pictures of a firm to act reliable and with integrity are fulfilled, the customers’ trust in a firm improves. Subsequently, this is translated into the first phase of customer commitment:
willing to build up a customer-firm relationship by occasionally purchasing the products at that firm. Finally, the rather result-oriented customers would rather base their trust on the quality of the products of a firm (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001). They prove that if the customers trust the product quality at a certain firm, that the customers’ willingness to build up a customer-firm relationship by occasionally purchase the products at that firm – increases as well.
This study examines another origin for customers to trust firms to act reliable and with integrity. It is being examined whether customers trust a firm, depending on the customers’
perceived legitimacy of the TMT/customer-base gender match. This is relevant to investigate, since a TMT/customer-base gender match appears as an important observable organizational legitimacy characteristic that functions as a signal for customers to infer the firm reputation (Wang et al., 2014). Thereby, the society demands equal career chances for men and women (Dezso & Ross, 2012). Female representation in TMT functions is a proper measurement scale for the career chances of women. This current study argues, that if a firm pays attention to this topic – in terms of constructing a proportionally TMT/customer-base gender match – the firm is likely to be perceived by its customers to act reliable and with integrity. Namely, the gender equality perception significantly determines whether customers trust the firm to act reliable and with integrity (trustworthy), since customers can easier identify themselves with the integrity principles of those firm (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Firms with a proportional TMT/customer-base gender match are considered to be trustworthy to act ethical (with integrity) by giving women equal career chances. Customers expect that such firms will take the needs of varying interests groups into account. Thereby, customer trust is likely to increase when customers have the feeling that their personal interests are fulfilled (Key & Xie, 2009). Namely, Ashforth and Mael (1989) proved that this is generally realized when customers observe firm-customer gender similarities, because these observed gender similarities make customers to trust firms to emphasize with their customer needs. Therefore, these gender similarities are operationalized in terms of the customers’ legitimacy perception of the TMT/customer-base gender match. Therefore, this study expects that a high TMT/customer-base gender match positively influence the customers’ legitimacy perception
of a firm to act trustworthy; reliable and with integrity. Subsequently, this study expects that this improves customer commitment in terms of the customers’ willingness to build up a customer-firm relationship by occasionally purchase the products at such a firm.
3.2.2. Component 2: Customer psychological commitment
This research captures customer commitment from a broad perspective; examining the origins of the customers’ willingness to build up and maintain customer-firm relationships in terms of the customers’ (re)purchase intentions. Chapter 3.2.1. discussed how a certain TMT/customer-base gender match affects customer trust, and how this subsequently influences customers’ willingness to build up a customer-firm relationship by occasionally purchasing products at a firm. This chapter scrutinizes on the origin of customers’ willingness to maintain a long-term customer-firm relationship, operationalized by the customer repurchase intentions at that firm. Consequently, by becoming a regular customer at a firm, customers prove to consider that customer-firm relationship as important (Gurin et al., 1980).
The customers’ willingness to maintain a long-term customer-firm relationship origins from a high psychological customer commitment with the product of the firm (Morgan &
Hunt, 1994; Bloemer & de Ruytker, 1998; Johnson et al., 2006). Those researchers define customer psychological commitment as the symbolic attachment or identification with the firms’ product image. Moreover, they prove customer psychological commitment to be the highest level of relational bonding, which is essential for successful long-term customer-firm relationships (Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Bloemer & de Ruytker, 1998; Johnson et al., 2006).
Customer-firm psychological commitment captures the long-term customer-firm relationship as well. Therefore, this research considers psychological commitment as an important predecessor of customer commitment in terms of the customers’ willingness to maintain a long-term customer-firm relationship by repurchasing their products at a specific firm.
Thereby, customer psychological commitment is a precursor of customer commitment since high relational bonding leads to high customer repurchase intentions at the specific firm Namely, psychological committed customers invest more heavily in the relationship with the firm (Evanschitzky et al., 2006). These customers perceive greater advances to repurchase the product at the firm where they are psychologically committed to, and perceive greater risks when they switch their preferred firm (Evanschitzky et al., 2006). This is another reason for this research to argue that psychological customer commitment affects customer commitment, since this research operationalizes this phase of customer commitment in terms of the customers’ repurchase intentions as well.
Therefore, in order to improve the customer commitment, the customers’
psychological commitment with a firm should be optimized. In other words, the relational bonding between the customer and the firm should be optimized. However, previous studies on the customers’ psychological commitment with a firm mainly focused on the customers’
relational bonding with the image of the product of the firm; whether customers could symbolically attach and identify themselves with the image of the product (Bloemer & de Ruytkerk, 1998; Garbarino & Johnson, 1999). However, this customer psychological commitment is based on a rather tangible symbolical image. Customers want to show others that they wear expensive clothes as a symbol of status (Yang & Mattila, 2014). Customers repurchase their products at specific firms because they want to be socially identified with the symbolic status/image of the product of that firm (Yang & Mattila, 2014).
This current research examines the origin of customer psychological commitment with a firm from a different perspective: as the customers’ symbolic attachment or identification with the overall firm image instead of with the product image. This study examines whether this customers’ symbolic attachment and identification with the overall firm image, is being influenced by the customers’ legitimacy perception of the TMT/customer-base gender match.
Namely, since the TMT functions as a symbol and as a flagship of a firm, the composition of a TMT might be a symbolic way of how firms want to express their underlying beliefs on ethical topics such as gender equality (Wang et al., 2014). When firms adopt people from diverse races and ethical backgrounds in their TMT, their overall firm image of being ethically involved increases (Canella et al., 2008; Opstrup & Villadsen, 2015). Customers are more likely to attach and identify with a firm with such an ethically involved TMT.
Nowadays, customers are more likely to symbolically attach and identify with an ethical responsible TMT in terms of a high TMT/customer-base gender match, due to the rise of the female emancipation (Dezso & Ross, 2012). Namely, people (customers) both have identities and they identify. Customers tend to identify with groups and firms that are personally or sociocultural important for their self-definition (Kawakami & Dion, 1985).
Customer-firm identification is for a significant part based on gender similarities (Ashforth &
Mael, 1989; Dutton et al., 1994; Pratt, 1998). When this customer-firm identification occurs based on observed gender similarities (e.g. because of a high TMT/customer-base gender match), the customers’ legitimacy perception of that firm becomes self-referential or self- defining (Pratt, 1998). Subsequently, customers come to see associations with the organization and its core values as integral to who they are and in terms of how they define themselves (Pratt, 1998).
Dutton et al. (1994) prove that customer identities and their firm-identification shape their (repurchasing) behaviour at those firms. Consequently, if customers consider organizational values as integral to their own identity based on customer-firm gender similarities such as a high TMT/customer-base gender match; the customer legitimacy perception on the firm increases. This improves the customers’ willingness to relational bond with the legitimate image of such a firm, which improves the customer repurchase intentions.
3.2.3. Component 3: Customer satisfaction
This study captures customer commitment in terms of the customer (re)purchase intentions by examining the origins of the customers’ willingness to build up and maintain customer-firm relationships. Chapter 3.2.1. examined how a customer-firm legitimacy perception based on a certain TMT/customer-base gender match affects the customer trust in a firm, and how this subsequently influences the customers’ willingness to build up a customer-firm relationship by occasionally purchasing the products at a firm. Chapter 3.2.2. examined how a customer- firm legitimacy perception based on a certain TMT/customer-base gender match affects the customer psychological commitment, and how this subsequently influences the customers’
willingness to maintain a customer-firm relationship by repurchasing the products at that firm. Now, this current chapter argues that there is a second factor that affects the customer commitment in terms of their willingness to maintain the customer-firm relationship by repurchasing at that firm. Namely, this chapter scrutinizes on how a certain TMT/customer- base gender match can influence the customer (self) satisfaction of purchasing at that firm.
This would subsequently strengthen the customer commitment in terms of the customers’
willingness to repurchase the products at that firm in order to maintain that feeling of self- satisfaction.
This research defines customer satisfaction as the customers’ post-purchase evaluative judgment on a purchase at a firm (Hunt, 1977; Oliver, 1980; Anderson et al., 2004). Customer satisfaction is an essential organizational goal since previous studies prove that high customer satisfaction significantly determines the customers’ repurchases intentions at that firm (Fornell, 1992; Oliver, 1997; Morgan et al., 2005). Since this part of this study operationalizes customer commitment as the customers’ willingness to maintain the customer-firm relationship in terms of their repurchase intentions, and since a high customer satisfaction has been found to stimulate these repurchase intentions; this research argues that a high customer satisfaction positively influences the customer commitment. Therefore, firms should improve customer satisfaction in order to improve the repurchase intentions and ultimately the
customer commitment. Consequently, various previous researchers investigated the customers’ desires that need to be fulfilled to get a high customer satisfaction. In this way, firms can anticipate on responding to those customers’ desires. For example, customer satisfaction arises when customers are satisfied with the quality of the product at a certain firm (Dick & Basu, 1994; Seiders et al., 2005; Jones & Reynolds, 2006).
This research does not measure customer satisfaction as the customer satisfaction with the quality of the product at a firm. In this study, customer satisfaction is operationalized in terms of the customers’ perceived inner happiness after buying products at a specific firm.
When customers buy products at a specific firm, they feel that indirectly agree with the ethical beliefs of that firm (Perez, 2009). On the other hand, when customers disagree with the organizations’ ethical beliefs, they can boycott such firms by not buying products at that firm (Perez, 2009). Consequently, when customers purchase their products at a firm, they identify themselves with the ethical beliefs of that firm. When customers agree on those ethical beliefs, they get the feeling that they actually contribute in solving those ethical issues when they repurchase products at that firm (Hellen & Saaksjarvi, 2011). In this way, customers help those corporately responsible firms – where they want to be identified with – to flourish and to defend the interests of minority groups (Singh, 2007; Keh & Xie, 2009). Customers experience a self-satisfying feeling that they stand up for the fate of those minority groups, which subsequently improves the customer satisfaction (Nilsson, 2014).
This current study argues that firms can express their underlying beliefs on ethical issues through the composition of their TMT (Canella et al., 2008; Opstrup & Villadsen, 2015). Since women are still underrepresented in TMT functions – despite the female emancipation – an important ethical issue is that women should have equal career chances (Helfat et al., 2006; Dezso & Ross, 2012). However, firms can express their point of view concerning this ethical issue, through the gender diversity of their TMT. Women are likely to get a satisfactory feeling when they purchase their products at firms with a high TMT/customer-base gender match, because they now stimulate firms that consider equal career chances for women as important (Jawad & Peter, 2008). Contrarily, some men get a satisfactory feeling of inner happiness when they purchase their products at firms with a low TMT/customer-base gender match in the benefit of men. Namely, they perceive a firm to be more legitimate when men occupy senior positions rather than women because they consider men to have more authority and charisma (Haines & Kray, 2005). Overall, this research argues that the overall customer satisfaction is higher when customers purchase at firms with a high TMT/customer-base gender match, because more people assume a firm to be legitimate
when women should have equal career chances, instead of merely favouring men in TMT positions (Reichel et al., 2010). When customers repurchase products at those firms with a high TMT/customer-base gender match, customers will experience a feeling of inner happiness because they feel that they stimulate the female emancipation by stimulating those firms where women do get a chance in TMT positions.
Since a high level of customer satisfaction in terms of inner happiness is a decisive factor for our overall wellbeing and for how we experience luck in life, people attach much value to optimize their customer satisfaction (Hellen & Saaksjarvi, 2011). Since this research argues that people experience inner happiness when they repurchase products at a firm with a high TMT/customer-base gender match, people are willing to maintain this customer-firm relationship in any case. Therefore, this research argues that customers are willing to spend excessive money and time (e.g. for travelling) to continue purchasing products at firms that gave them their high satisfaction.
Consequently, this research expects that the customer-firm legitimacy perception based on a high TMT/customer-base gender match positively influence the customer satisfaction. Subsequently, this improves the customer commitment in terms of the customers’
willingness to maintain a long-term customer-firm relationship, which is characterized by the customers’ willingness to exert excessive effort to repurchase the product at that firm.
3.2.4. Hypothesis on the effect of (perceived) gender legitimacy on customer commitment Summarized, this research argues that both customer trust, customer psychological commitment, and customer satisfaction determine the level of customer commitment in terms of the customer (re)purchase intentions. Subsequently, this research argues that the customer- firm legitimacy perception based on a high TMT/customer-base gender match positively influences all three of these customer commitment pillars; resulting in the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1:
A high TMT/customer-base gender match positively affects the customers’ legitimacy perception of a firm through improved customer trust, psychological commitment and satisfaction, and therefore customer commitment in terms of customer (re)purchase intentions.
3.3. Customer acceptance as a mediator of the relationship between gender legitimacy and customer commitment
This research considers customer commitment as the customers’ tendency to rather prefer (re)purchasing products at firms depending on the TMT/customer-base gender match scenario of that firm. It will now be examined whether this preference is in itself driven by the fact that the ‘TMT/customer-base gender scenario’ affects a third variable, which goes on to affect the dependent variable customer commitment. This research examines whether customer acceptance – as the potential mediator – can explain the relationship between the customer- firm legitimacy perception based on the TMT/customer-base gender match on the one hand, and the customer commitment on the other hand.
This study builds on the definition of Arch and Craske (2008) that acceptance is the process of directly monitoring, stating and subsequently expressing yourself by dealing with a certain situation, instead of avoiding or supressing exposures about that situation. This situation is the TMT/customer-base gender match, and customers can express that they deal with (accept) the situation through their (re)purchase intentions. Here, the customer acceptance is in particular considered as the customers’ agreement with the firms’ beliefs and views on ethical issues. When customer agreement on the firms’ beliefs and views on ethical issues is high, customers consider the firm as corporately responsible (Perez, 2009). In other words, customer acceptance is considered as the degree to which customers perceive a firm to be corporately responsible. Customers generally perceive firms to be corporately responsible when the TMT is a representative reflection of the society, since equal career chances for women are an urgent ethical topic (Singh, 2007). Namely, Reichel et al. (2010) explain from a neo-institutional perspective that the growing needs for a gender representative TMT influences how customers accept a firm to be corporately responsible. They argue that the increasing co-evaluation of feminization can be explained by the evolving ‘rules of the game’
from the broader institutional environment that impose the incorporation of women in TMT positions, because there was a growing need to comply with the growing institutional norms of gender egalitarianism (Reichel et al., 2010).
Customers accept firms to be corporately responsible if they do comply with these growing institutional norms on gender egalitarianism. Therefore, it became important for organizations to have women in ‘visible’ TMT positions (Singh, 2007; Perez, 2009).
Therefore, this research argues that the TMT/customer-base gender match affects the degree to which customers accept firms to be corporately responsible. We combine the neo- institutional perspective with the definition of customer acceptance by McNulty (1975);
‘power is only legitimate if it is justified by an ethical or metaphysical principle that it is accepted by the society’. Therefore, this research argues that the TMT power is better accepted by its customer (representing the society) as being legitimate, if firms meet the growing gender egalitarianism standards by constructing a TMT with a high TMT/customer- base gender match.
Subsequently, this research builds on previous studies who proved that customers tend to prefer to (re)purchase their products at firms of which customers accept them to be corporately responsible (Perez, 2009; Qadir et al., 2013). Consequently, this study argues that a high TMT/customer-base gender match improves the customers’ perception on the firms’
legitimacy by their perception on the firms’ corporately responsibility, which enhances the customer-firm acceptance and subsequently their customer commitment in terms of (re)purchase intentions. Therefore, this research argues that the customer-firm acceptance can explain the relation between the perceived legitimacy of the TMT/customer-base gender match and the customer commitment, resulting in the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2:
The relationship between the perceived legitimacy of the TMT/customer-base gender match and customer commitment is mediated by the customers’ acceptance of a firm to be corporately responsible.
4. Data and Method 4.1. Sample
The analyses of this quantitative research are based on primary data, which are gathered by an online questionnaire/survey using Qualtrics software. To collect valid data, the researcher asked all the respondents in person to complete the questionnaire seriously. By guaranteeing the privacy of the respondents, by informing them that their answers are treated anonymously, confidentially and will only be used for the purpose of this research, the data are ethically conducted. Namely, the respondents consent the researcher to use their answers when they complete the questionnaire. Respondents were suitable to complete the questionnaire if they were 18 years or older. The bulk part of the respondents was personally approached on Facebook, by using the one-to-one Facebook Messenger Chat. After short personal chat conversations, the respondents were asked to complete the questionnaire. However, by merely approaching personal Facebook ‘friends’, the sample would become an unrepresentative reflection of the society, since most Facebook-respondents are young, masculine and highly educated. To rectify this issue, the researcher printed out 15 hard copy questionnaires and took them to the market. There, the researcher approached 15 respondents face-to-face, with the focus on older people. Thereafter, the researcher took these data over to the software himself.
In total, 170 respondents (N = 170) started the questionnaire. During the process of data gathering, a peculiarity occurred. Namely, 45 questionnaires were not completed by real respondents but ended up in the dataset because of a wrong setting in the software. The data of all these 45 ‘respondents’ were all displayed underneath each other in the dataset and they all stopped after completing the four control questions. Therefore, these data are not valid and therefore excluded from the empirical analysis. Of the remaining 125 respondents, research supervisors completed 3 questionnaires as a research quality check-up. Therefore, the answers of these three respondents were deleted from the dataset. Then, 9 of the remaining 122 respondents did not complete the questionnaire entirely. Therefore, the researcher deleted the answers of these 9 respondents, resulting in a remaining dataset of 113 respondents of which valid data were available. See the flowchart (figure 1) for a schematic overview of this process. A copy of the questionnaire is displayed in Appendix 7.
Figure 1: Flowchart of the working sample:
4.2. Approaches and measures
4.2.1. Legitimacy of the TMT/customer-base gender match: A scenario approach
This research applies a scenario approach to measure whether the customer legitimacy perception on a firm based on the TMT/customer-base gender match, affects customer commitment. Therefore, two opposite TMT/customer-base gender match scenarios are constructed. The first scenario (proxy variable) is firm A with a high TMT/customer-base gender match. The second scenario (proxy variable) is firm B with a low TMT/customer-base gender match. Scenarios (proxy variables) are used because this research applies a rather exploratory research design. The purpose of this research was mainly to explore the issue;
whether the customers’ perceived legitimacy of the firm – based on the TMT/customer-base gender match – affects customer commitment in the first place. The researcher uses this scenario approach, because it is already possible to reveal such an effect by merely applying two scenarios with opposite values. If the results appear to be highly significant, future (explanatory) studies can further elaborate on this relationship (by applying different research designs).
In the questionnaire, the scale of measurement is a 7-point likert scale. A score of 1 on the 7-point likert scale means that the respondents rather prefer to (re)purchase their products at firm A. A score of 7 on the 7-point likert scale means that the respondents rather prefer to (re)purchase their products at firm B. A neutral score of 4 on the 7-point likert scale means
that the respondents’ customer commitment – in terms of their (re)purchase intentions towards firm A or firm B – is not influenced by the opposite TMT/customer-base gender match scenarios.
Subsequently, this research measures whether opposite TMT/customer-base gender match scenarios influences whether it statistically deviates from the neutral score 4 (test value
=4.0) that customers rather prefer to (re)purchase their products at firm A or rather at firm B.
Consequently, this research uses two scenarios that are expected to move respondents away from the neutral score 4; no preference, depending on the perceived gender legitimacy of the two scenarios. The two scenarios – firm A versus firm B – are incorporated in the same questions that measure the customer commitment in terms of the customers (re)purchase intentions; the dependent variable.
4.2.2. The three components of customer commitment
This research examines whether and how these scenarios – firm A versus firm B with opposite TMT/customer-base gender matches – influence customer commitment in terms of the customers’ tendency to rather prefer to (re)purchase their products at one of those two firms. As stated in the theory chapter, this research builds on the findings of Pan, Sheng and Xie (2012) that customer commitment is built up from three different pillars; customer trust, customer psychological commitment and customer satisfaction. These predecessors of customer commitment are measured by question 5.1 (trust), question 5.2 (psychological commitment) and question 5.3 (customer satisfaction) in the questionnaire. Subsequently, the mean values of these questions are added up together and then divided by three, to construct the dependent variable ‘customer commitment’, as discussed in Chapter 3.2 on customer commitment. Consequently, question 5.1 (customer trust), question 5.2 (customer psychological commitment) and question 5.3 (customer satisfaction) measure whether the respondents indeed report statistically significantly (p≤0.05) lower (firm A) or higher (firm B) than 4 (neutral score) on customer commitment; the dependent variable.
Besides this theoretical foundation on the construction of the customer commitment variable as discussed in the theory, it will now be statistically underpinned that it is reliable to aggregate the scores of the three components to create the customer commitment variable. This is demonstrated by using the Cronbach’s alpha, which is the expected correlation of two tests that measure the same construct. The Cronbach’s alpha is a function of the number of items in a test, the total score variance, and the average covariance between item-pairs. It measures the reliability of the scale (Bonett & Wright, 2015). In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha examines whether
customer trust, customer psychological commitment and customer satisfaction can be aggregated to create the main variable – customer commitment – based on their mutual correlation. In other words, it is examined whether these three components capture the same underlying construct of customer commitment. The Cronbach’s alpha for these three items is 0.76, which is displayed in Appendix 2. This suggests that the three components have a relatively high internal consistency.
Therefore, it is statistically reliable to aggregate the scores of these three components to create the ultimate outcome variable customer commitment. How these three pillars relate to the corresponding questions in the questionnaire will now be discussed per pillar.
4.2.2.1. Customer trust
In this study, the first predecessor of customer commitment is customer trust. Customer trust is examined as the customers’ expectations of a firm to act reliable and with integrity on ethical issues. These expectations (trust) are based on the customers’ legitimacy perception of a firm, based on its TMT/customer-base gender match. This study measures how this TMT/customer-base gender match affects customers to trust a firm to act reliable and with integrity, with question 5.1 in the questionnaire ‘I would like to buy the product at firm...’.
Namely, customers aim to stimulate firms to flourish when they trust them to act reliable and with integrity on ethical issues. Now, customers can stimulate those firms by purchasing their products, which is measured by question 5.1. In this way, customers can express their trust in an organization.
A score of 1 on the 7-point likert scale for question 5.1 means that the respondents rather prefer to buy their products at firm A. Namely, they perceive a firm with a high TMT/customer-base gender match to be legitimate and therefore to be trustworthy to act reliable and with integrity. A score of 7 on the 7-point likert scale for question 5.1 means that the respondents rather prefer to buy their products at firm B. Namely, they perceive a firm with a low TMT/customer-base gender match to be trustworthy to act reliable in terms of fulfilling the specific needs of those respondents. Consequently, question 5.1 on customer trust measures whether the respondents indeed report statistically significantly (p≤0.05) lower (firm A) or higher (firm B) than 4 (neutral score) on customer commitment; the ultimate dependent variable.
4.2.2.2. Customer psychological commitment
The second predecessor of customer commitment is customer psychological commitment. As stated in Chapter 3.2.2, previous studies consider customer psychological commitment as the
customers’ symbolic attachment or identification with a firm or product, which is characterised by the highest level of relational bonding (Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Bloemer & de Ruytkerk, 1998; Johnson et al., 2006). The degree to which customers are willing to
‘psychologically commit’ (relationally bond) with a firm is examined by the customers’
legitimacy perception of a firm based on the TMT/customer-base gender match. The level of customer psychological commitment with a firm can be measured by the degree to which customers are willing to maintain a long-term customer-firm relationship, which can be measured by the customer repurchase intentions. Therefore, the customers’ psychological commitment (relational bonding) with a firm can be measured by the customer repurchase intentions. Namely, when customers keep repurchasing products at one specific firm, they prove that it is psychologically important for them maintain that relationship. These customer repurchase intentions at a firm are high when customers are likely to become a regular customer at that firm, which is measured by question 5.2: ‘I am likely to become a regular customer at firm...’. Consequently, question 5.2 in the questionnaire measures the preferred customer repurchase intentions towards firm A or towards firm B; and thus how customers are psychologically committed (relationally bonded) to that firm, based on their legitimacy perception of two firms with opposite TMT/customer-base gender matches.
A score of 1 on the 7-point likert scale for question 5.2 means that the respondents rather prefer to repurchase their products at firm A because customers are more psychological committed to firms with a high TMT/customer-base gender match, since they perceive that match as more legitimate. A score of 7 on the 7-point likert scale for question 5.2 means that the respondents rather prefer to repurchase their products at firm B because customers are more psychological committed to firms with a low TMT/customer-base gender match, since they perceive that match as more legitimate. Consequently, question 5.2 on customer psychological commitment measures whether the respondents indeed report statistically significantly (p≤0.05) lower (firm A) or higher (firm B) than 4 (neutral score) on customer commitment; the dependent variable.
4.2.2.3. Customer satisfaction
The third predecessor of customer commitment is customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is examined as the self-satisfactory feeling that customers experience after buying a product at a certain firm of which customers perceive it to be legitimate based on the TMT/customer-base gender match of that firm. This research measures how this TMT/customer-base gender match affects the customer satisfaction with question 5.3 in the
questionnaire: ‘I am willing to spend more money and time for travelling to purchase the product at firm...’. The extent to which customers are willing to put in excessive effort to rather purchase their products at firm A or at firm B, displays whether and how a TMT/customer-base gender match affects the customers’ experienced self-satisfactory feeling after buying a product. Namely, customers aim to optimize their self-satisfaction because this is a key determinant of peoples’ happiness in life (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Customers demonstrate that they aim to optimize their self-satisfaction by their willingness to put in excessive effort to buy the product at a firm that gives them this high self-satisfaction, which is measured by question 5.3.
A score of 1 on the 7-point likert scale for question 5.3 means that the respondents rather prefer to repurchase their products at firm A because they want to optimize their (self) satisfaction by buying at a firm they perceive to be legitimate based on its high TMT/customer-base gender match. A score of 7 on the 7-point likert scale for question 5.3 means that the respondents rather prefer to repurchase their products at firm B because they want to optimize their (self) satisfaction by buying at a firm they perceive to be legitimate based on its low TMT/customer-base gender match. Consequently, question 5.3 on customer satisfaction measures whether the respondents indeed report statistically significantly (p≤0.05) lower (firm A) or higher (firm B) than 4 (neutral score) on customer commitment;
the dependent variable.
4.2.3. Customer acceptance
This study considers a potential mediating variable to measure how the effect of gender legitimacy as captured by the choice between firm A versus firm B on customer commitment (dependent variable) may run through another variable. The move away from a neutral answer (4) towards customer commitment to firm A or to firm B is the ultimate outcome. However, this might be driven by the fact that the scenario affects another – mediating – variable, which goes on to affect customer commitment. The ‘customer acceptance’ of such a TMT based on their TMT/customer-base gender match, is the potential mediating variable in this research.
This is measured by question 5.4 in the questionnaire, ‘I will accept firm … more as being a representative reflection of the customer base’. Namely, as discussed in chapter 3.3, customers are more likely to accept a TMT to be corporately responsible, when its gender composition is a representative reflection of the customer base, since this representativeness is an important predecessor of customer-firm acceptance (Singh, 2007). Thereby, chapter 3.3
