This study examined the impact of membership fees on consumer attitude and purchase behavior. Subjects participated in a computerized simulated shopping experiment, and chose between three competing videotape rental stores, receiving feedback about purchase utility on each occasion. Manipulations included the presence or absence of an initial membership-fee requirement at the dominant store and the timing of a lowering of that store's utility to the same level as that offered by a competing establishment. Store loyalty is shown to vary as a function of membership fees and utility changes in a manner consistent with hypotheses generated from prospect, escalation-of-commitment, cognitive-dissonance, and self-perception theories.
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Dick et al. (1998) studied this question.