Dear all,
I am a PhD-student and I would like to ask an urgent questition.
In my PhD I explore the influence of the age on the customer loyalty. Therefore I developed a “classical” model explaining customer loyalty. In this model I found among others a causal connection between satisfaction and loyalty. Now one can identify the moderating effect of the age on this causal connection (between satisfaction and loyalty) with the help of an interaction term analysis.
I developed the following hypothesis: The influence of the age is mediated by a change of personal characteristics. This means e.g. with a higher age the variety seeking of a person declines. And this induces an enhancement of the causal connection between satisfaction and loyalty.
For testing this effect empirically, I have to test the moderating effect of the age on the relation between satisfaction and loyalty and the mediating effect of the variety seeking at the same time.
For the calculation I have the following idea: Firstly determining the moderating influence of the age (1 = path coefficient of the interaction term) and the variety seeking (2 = path coefficient of the interaction term) with the help of the interaction term method. Secondly I would to test separately the influence of the age on the variety seeking (3 = path coefficient). So, on the basis of the path coefficients 1, 2 and 3 I would like to determine the mediating influence of the variety seeking (VAF and z-Test).
Is this procedure suitable?
Has anybody an idea for another procedure?
Does anybody know a publication in which this combined procedure of moderating and mediating effects is already carried out?
I would be very grateful if somebody could help me!
Thank you and best regards
Steffen