Managing commitment in the personal care service industry: the special case of hairdressing services

Since its inception, the concept of customer commitment has been extensively researched, especially in the field of relationship marketing. It is therefore not surprising to find that the concept of commitment has been applied to various industries, both on an academic and practical level. However, the same cannot be said about the personal care service industry, which refers to industries that are characterised by high levels of customer interaction during the service delivery process. These industries include the hairdressing, legal services and medical services industries. This study focuses on the management of customer commitment from a personal care service perspective. The specific context of the study is the hairdressing industry. The study applies Meyer and Allen?s well-documented three-component model of commitment, and investigates the management of affective, calculative and normative commitment in the hairdressing industry. A quantitative approach was used to analyse the perceptions of 270 Generation Y respondents. Generation Y, also known as the millennials, refers to people who were born in the 1980s and 1990s. The data were analysed in SPSS version 25, and a regression analysis was used to assess the statistical significance of the hypothesised relationships. The results of the study indicate that satisfaction, social bonds, attractiveness of alternatives, relationship benefits and communication are significant antecedents of customer commitment in the hairdressing industry. The primary contribution of the study lies in the fact that it provides both theoretical insights and practical recommendations on how customer commitment in this relatively under-researched context should be managed.