While the marketing literature typically explains commitment through attitudinal constructs such as trust and commitment, we develop an alternative behavioral approach in which commitment results from the accumulation of acts of purchase and consumption (Kiesler, 1971). We show that (1) the predictive power of a behavioral model, tested on a sample of 432 magazine readers, is equivalent to a conventional attitudinal model (explained variance: 0.529 vs. 0.527), and (2) the cumulative nature of acts does not strengthen the influence of attitudes on commitment (explained variance of integrative attitudes–behaviors model: 0.546). These findings suggest that it is better to use behavioral data to predict commitment, because it is easier to collect.
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