Morgan and Hunt (1994) found that customer commitment entirely mediated the relationship between consumer evaluations of background variables and consumer loyalty-like intentions regarding the relation- ship (Morgan and Hunt, 1994). Under this perspective, retail service quality could be viewed as one of a number of commitment-creating background evaluative benefits that consumers seek from their relationship with service providers (Gruen et al., 2000). Service quality also includes issues of reliability and integrity that lie at the foundation of trust (Doney and Cannon, 1997), which Morgan and Hunt (1994) found was an immediate antecedent of commitment to the relational partner. These feelings of attachment and trust may well be a result of the same processes which create the overall service quality construct. Thus, in a retail services context, overall service quality would be an immediate antecedent of affective commitment in service relation- ships. At the same time, to the extent that the elements of service quality represent potential relationship benefits that would be lost in the event of a switching decision, service quality will also drive continuance commitment in the relationship