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Cornell University School of Hotel Administration e Scholarly Commons Articles and Chapters School of Hotel Administration Collection Spring 1999 Growing the Trust Relationship Christopher W. Hart Spi re Group, L td. Michael D. Johnson Cornell University, mdj27@ Follow this and additional works at : /articles art of the Marketing Commons Recommended Citation Hart, C. W., Johnson, M. D. (1999). Growing the trust relationship [Electronic version]. Marketing M anagem ent, 8(1), 9-19. Retrieved [insert date], from Cornell University, School of Hospitality Administration site: / articles/432/ This Article or Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Hotel Administration Collection at The Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles and Chapters by an authorized administrator of The Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact hlmdigital@. Growing the Trust Relationship Abstract ractically every company today is geared up to satisfy its customers. We do whatever it takes to satisfy our customers! is the refrain. But does customer satisfaction go far enough? There is in fact, a wide gap between how most companies think about and measure customer satisfaction and what their most satisfied customers actually feel. Customer loyalty has been put forth as the bridge that spans this gap, capturing long-term relationship elements that provide a more complete picture of customers feelings. However, loyalty traditionally has been defined in terms of its consequences: repurchase intent, referral intent, share of purchases, and actual repurchase. While these measures are indicators of loyalty, they do not answer the question, W hat is customer loyalty and how is it created? To leapfrog competitors, companies must go beyond customer delight and what benchmarking studies define as world-class standards, raising the bar to a visi