Taylor and Sirmans (2019) published an article in the Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction & Complaining Behaviors investigating the role of relative status quo effects in an insurance context. The research identifies the judgment and decision-making (J/DM) context as an additional relevant concern today for assessing consumer decision-making relative to automobile insurance. The research focuses on potential status quo effects on a satisfaction and trust model of customer loyalty, demonstrating that relative status quo contexts (relative to another consumer) appear to invoke a different J/DM model than non-comparative status quo contexts. The results demonstrate the general importance of consumer trust across both assessed contexts as a foundation for customer loyalty decisions. Satisfaction judgments, on the other hand, were found to operate only in the non-comparative scenario. The results afford important insights for insurance marketers in terms of positioning strategies based upon group membership identification versus noncomparative emphases such as price.
