Customer lifetime value: investigating the factors affecting attitudinal and behavioural brand loyalty

Purpose This paper investigates the factors affecting customer lifetime value from an attitudinal and behavioural brand loyalty perspective in the Internet service industry. Specifically, willingness to pay more and word of mouth are categorised under attitudinal loyalty, while repurchase intention is classified under behavioural loyalty. Design/methodology/approach A self-administered questionnaire online survey via Google Forms was employed comprising a sample of 481 participants from the Internet service providers. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach was applied for hypotheses testing. Findings The current study found that "brand credibility, special treatment benefits and confidence benefits had a positive and significant influence on willingness to pay more, word of mouth and repurchase intention, with confidence benefits and brand credibility showing as the greatest elements resulting in word of mouth and repurchase intentions, whereas special treatment benefits showing as the greatest element resulting in the willingness to pay more. The results of this study did not show any positive significant between service quality dimensions and true brand loyalty (word of mouth, willingness to pay more and repurchase intention). Results also found that confidence benefits, brand credibility and special treatment benefits had an indirect impact on true brand loyalty through customer satisfaction". Practical implications Internet service providers should develop and maintain good relationships with their customers as the excellence of the customer-service provider relationship can enhance customer lifetime value. Originality/value The current work measured customer lifetime value in terms of both the behavioural and attitudinal aspects to represent loyalty, while most previous studies consider only one dimension for this representation. Particularly, customers' true brand loyalty is measured using separate components of repurchase intentions (RIs), willingness to pay more (WPM) and word of mouth (WOM) to deepen the understanding of both managerial interest and academic.