How do customers’ perceptions of the firm and other customers predict their proactive and reactive helping behavior?

In response to the scant research attention on customer-to-customer interactions, this paper examines firm-related (i.e. customer-firm identification) and other customers-related drivers (i.e. social and functional benefits) of customers’ helping behavior. It adapts social exchange and functional motive theories to explain the relevance of these drivers to customers’ reactive and proactive helping roles respectively. 315 valid responses were collected by the means of a mall interception sample from GYM customers. The data was analyzed by the means of a multi-group analysis of SmarPLS . The results showed that social benefits are the dominant driver of the helping behavior for both proactive and reactive helpers. Functional benefits were found more important for proactive but not reactive helpers, while customer-firm identification was found more important for reactive but not proactive helpers. These findings offer many insights on how to manage “customer mix.” It contributions to the literature by integrating customers’ perceptions of the firm and other customers in predicting their helping behavior in response to the fragmented literature on these issues. To date, the distinction between proactive and reactive helping roles of the focal customers has been of exploratory nature. This is the first quantitative study to validate and examine these differences.