The Interrelations between Member-Commitment, Trust, Satisfaction and Loyalty in a Co-Operative Context

Member commitment is relevant for all businesses, but it is particularly crucial in co-operative context due to coops' unique characteristics. In a co-op, an owner's most important contribution is an active use of its services, not capital investment. So far, scholars have aimed at understanding the forms, cause and consequences of commitment. Namely, affective, calculative and normative commitment have been investigated. However, many studies addressing the topic in a co-op context have been theoretical. Additionally, the relationship of members' organizational commitment to other variables remains unclear. The purpose of this quantitative study is to examine the relationships between commitment's three forms (affective, continuance, normative) with trust, satisfaction and loyalty. The study was carried out in one of the regional co-operatives of S Group in Finland. The data consist of 3637 responses. A structural equation modeling was used as an analysis method. Results indicate that trust and satisfaction affect to commitment's three forms otherwise positively, but the relationship between satisfaction and normative commitment was negative. Affective and continuance commitment affected positively and normative commitment negatively to loyalty. The data indicates that trust, rather than satisfaction is a powerful positive driver to all three forms of commitment. Affective commitment affected loyalty as expected, but normative commitment affected negatively to loyalty. This research offers new insights to vastly discussed phenomenon of commitment by including more variables into examination. This is particularly relevant when researching commitment not only within organizations but among customers as well. Moreover, we also contribute to the discussion of organizational commitment in the context of consumer co-ops. We argue that co-op's unique features help explaining the research findings indicating that commitment has a particular meaning and interconnections in a model that is participative by nature, is characterized by dual nature and unique ownership structure based on patronage.