Untying the knot: Drivers of the intention to downgrade the relationship in B2B service contexts

We investigate a negative outcome of the relationship continuum – a business customer’s intention to downgrade the relationship with a financial service provider. By adopting complexity theory and using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), we provide six combinations of causal conditions that can affect the customer’s intention to downgrade an industrial relationship. Based on a unique dataset of five-hundreds questionnaires, we provide combinations of trust, satisfaction, commitment, loyalty, and relationship age that lead a customer to downgrade its relationship with a seller. Complexity theory and QCA allow us to highlight more intricate relationships among the predictors of a relationship’s trajectory, challenging the notion that a business relationship must always concomitantly possess all virtuous characteristics as a shield from downgrading. Sub-group analyses support that the successful configurations of trust, satisfaction, commitment, loyalty, and relationship age may depend on the number and size of a firm’s partners.