Topic > Customer Loyalty - 2200

According to Srivastava, Shervani and Fahey, 2000, customer loyalty has been an important resource and unanimously recognized as a valuable resource in competitive markets. As a result, it becomes more important to empower loyalty panels, particularly when consumers face very low switching or switching costs because they are not bound by a contract (Shapiro and Vivian, 2000). It has also become important in competitive markets due to the availability of more profitable and easily available options. Over the past decade the concept of customer loyalty has been around and is present across all parts/activities of numerous industries (Lewis, 1997). Developing loyalty includes building and maintaining a relationship with a customer, which leads to repetitive purchasing of products or services over a specific period of time. A loyal customer base also allows companies to offer their skills and expertise to other business matters (Gefen, 2002; Rowley & Dawes, 2000). To understand what drives customer loyalty or how your company defines customer loyalty, we can look at the behavioral aspect of it. Customers can demonstrate their loyalty in several ways. They may prefer to stay in a firm, whether this persistence is distinguished as a relationship or not, or they may increase the number of purchases, or they may do both (Reinartz & Kumar, 2003; Rowley & Dawes, 2000). The purpose of this research is to link loyalty to emerging theories of CRM (Macintosh & Lockshin, 1997) or as a key element of effective CRM. Although some authors, such as Dick & Basu (1994), have a different view of each element and make a distinction between brand loyalty, store loyalty, seller loyalty, product and service...... in the center of the paper. ....the section of cognitive and affective elements was analyzed by Oliver (1999). Attitudinal loyalty can sometimes lead customers to provide exceptional value to the company through positive word of mouth researched by Dick & Basu, 1994; Hagel and Armstrong, 1997; Reichheld, 2003. Disappointment in the attitudinal loyalty relationship could lead to false loyalty (Dick & Basu, 1994). Therefore, to achieve true loyalty, companies should simultaneously focus on building both behavioral and attitudinal loyalty. Thus, if we look at both the service management and marketing literature, both suggest that there is a well-constructed theoretical basis for an experiential examination of the links between customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and profitability. Storbacka argues that to date there is relatively little empirical research conducted on these relationships (Storbacka et al.., 1994)