It’s More than Just a Game: The Effect of Core and Supplementary Services on Customer Loyalty

Executive Summary: All service providers seek to provide a comprehensive experience for their customers, with the goal of cementing customer loyalty and encouraging future purchases. In most services, we can identify core aspects (e.g., a good night's sleep at a hotel) and supplementary aspects (e.g., concierge and valet services). For professional sports, the core service is the sporting contest itself, but many other supplementary services may also be included. We use a comprehensive dataset of over 7,000 patrons of a major professional sport in the United States to determine how customers' satisfaction with core and supplementary services influence their intent to repeat a ticket purchase. We find that satisfaction with both core and supplementary services are important for loyal customers, but first-time customers tend to focus only on core service satisfaction when considering whether to purchase another ticket. One implication of this study is that firms should focus on their customers' full experience. Firms must first focus on their core services and then augment them appropriately with supplementary services.

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• It's More than Just a Game: The Effect of Core and Supplementary Services on Customer Loyalty
• By Matthew Walsman, Michael Dixon Ph.D., Rob Rush, and Rohit Verma Ph.D.