Antecedents of customers’ helping behaviour toward other customers: An application on Egyptian higher education industry

Customers' citizenship behaviour refers to all extra role behaviorus performed by customers that do not affect successful completion of the service (Groth, 2005). Compared to more popular dimensions of citizenship behaviours (e.g. word-of-mouth), customers' helping behaviour has received scant research attention by marketing scholars. This research aims at developing an overarching model of antecedents of customers' helping behaviour using mixed research design. A qualitative exploratory phase, that employed two focus groups and nine in-depth interviews with undergraduate students at number of universities in Egypt, was conducted, to uncover and validate drivers of helping behaviour. A conceptual framework was then developed and tested by the means of questionnaire. 424 valid responses were collected by means quota samples from undergraduate students at five different universities. The data was analyzed by the means of SEM using SmartPLS. The study findings showed that customers' satisfaction was found to have the strongest impact on customers' helping behaviour, followed by customers' tendency to have extraversion personality trait and then, social identification with their university and their engagement in students' activities. In addition, customers' perceptions of justice were found insignificant predictor of customers' helping behaviour.