Types of Research

This research aims to know the influence of product quality and customer satisfaction toward customer loyalty. This type of research is a research

This paper will outline the different types of research – traditional inquiry study and action research study. A traditional inquiry study is based upon experimental processes that can analyze how certain situation can affect other situation, such as making a comparison of the percentage of poor children that obtain a college education versus the percentage of upper and middle class children. An action research study would not only seek to know the difference in the percentage of poor children obtaining a college education, but would implement programs for the poor children giving the same opportunities of the upper and middle class children.

Customer satisfaction and service quality are the two important components that direct anyone’s attention in every concept related to marketing, services, etc. (Spreng and Mackoy, 2006). In today’s competitive era, the success lies in

Similarly, Molinari, Abratt, and Dion (2008) assert that there is a direct and strong link between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty behavior. If the customers enjoy the product or service, they will not be bothered to become loyal to the company. In other words, high levels of satisfaction commonly occur when the customer is delighted or happy with either the products or services provided by a business supplier. As Caceres and Paparoidamis (2005) state, customer satisfaction levels are determined and influenced by many elements. For example, it is commonly admitted that the customers will naturally repeatedly return to the company when things are done right, or in other words, business service companies successfully meet the customer’s expectation (Gil-Saura, et. al., 2009). Furthermore, increases in satisfaction could result to increase customer loyalty. A business enterprise, which could address the elements moderating the level of satisfaction of customers, probably would reach the higher level of loyalty. In other words, customer satisfaction is likely to improve customer loyalty in general.

In order to operate a successful and profitable business, certain strategies must be put in place. One very important strategy is customer relationship management. To ensure that every customer has the opportunity to receive exceptional customer service and the ability to become a loyal customer, an organization must follow these steps. First, the organization must evaluate their current customer service strategies and organizational goals. This will help decipher strengths and weaknesses of the organization. Once the organization’s weaknesses are determined, action must be taken immediately. The weaknesses should act as opportunities, while the strengths can be used as something to capitalize off of. If an organization lacks a loyalty program, their next step would be to design one that correlates with their business model and organization goals. Once an organization redesigns their customer service strategies and customer loyalty programs, they will need to accurately apply metrics to successfully measure the value of the changes being made.

In order to survive in the competitive business environment organisations have to concentrate upon strengthening their consumer’s satisfaction strategies for ensuring consumer loyalty in the long run of business. In order to incorporate a long term customer retention strategy, organisations are in immediate need for assessing and unveiling the reasons and elements prior to the designing and implementation process of the consumer retention programmes. The importance of consumer loyalty could be

Yin (2003) and Saunders et al. (2009) recognized that granting numerous research strategies occur, there are great commonalities amongst them and henceforth the significant contemplation would be to choose the greatest useful strategy for a particular research study. Some of the typical research approaches used in business and management are experiment, questionnaires, case study, action research and grounded theory and ethnography, archival research, cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies and participative enquiry.

Organizations use research primarily for two functions, first function is to find out the habits and needs of the people and coming up with new innovative ideas and products to satisfy their needs. Second function is to help managers in their decision making process and improving their decision making skills by identifying the future and present issues organization might face. The ability to contribute complex theoretical descriptions of experience of people in a given research is known as Qualitative analysis (Davidson, 2009). For better functioning of teamwork, business research is very useful to organizations in their decision making process. The success of any organization and impact on performance can be achieved

Today’s managers have a growing need to understand scientific findings and incorporate them into decision making. Research always facilitates effective management. At many government organizations research drives every aspect of major decision making. In some organizations, research is so fundamental that management makes hardly any significant decision without the benefit of some kind of research.

Many companies today have come to the conclusion that customer loyalty is not effortlessly achieved since customers have so many options and alternative to choose from. Customers are the decision makers of where and when to shop. The research in this chapter will focus on what factors or elements impact customer’s loyalty. According to Harvey Thompson (2004), there are numerous factors that influence customer’s loyalty. One of these factors is the price of the products rather than the perception of value. Another factor is the attribute of the product and how well it caters to the customers wants and needs. Service is another element in which the customer measures their experience and evaluates whether they

Research is one of the most essential aspects that influence decision makers of many companies. These decisions are based on facts. These facts are verifiable and can be replicated. Good research follows these standards of the scientific method. The characteristics of the scientific method of research are: “1) Purpose clearly defined 2) Research process detailed 3) Research design thoroughly planned 4) High ethical standards applied 5) Limitations frankly revealed 6) Adequate analysis for decision maker’s needs 7) Findings presented unambiguously 8) Conclusions justified 9) Researcher’s experience reflected. Good business research has an inherent value only to the extent that it helps management make better decisions that help

Customer loyalty is an important element for the companies for being successful in the competitive world. Therefore, companies always try to increase the number of loyal customers and the degree of their customers’ loyalty. For obtaining this, the elements, which cause a decrease in customer loyalty, must be learned carefully. The reasons for the decrease in customer loyalty are: (Coroglu, 2002)

From the above definitions of customer loyalty, I can say that it is related to attitude or behaviour of the customers over a product or service resulting in repeat purchasing or patronizing. It is also said that loyalty is also closely related to commitment but is different from its reciprocity because it is usually applied for customer-seller relationship (Pritchard, 1999). In addition, customer loyalty consists of not only building but maintaining a relationship with one’s customer (Chow & Holden, 1997). According to Mitchell & Sanders (1995), that customer loyalty has been described as a connection and commitment to seller’s offering over the long term. Furthermore, Jones and Sasser (1995) discovered that one of the key element of securing customer loyalty is through customer satisfaction.

Understanding consumer behaviour has taken the attention of researchers and companies due to their relevance for business success (Jones et al 2000). How is consumer satisfaction related with their loyalty has been likely the most important issue in consumer behaviour for ensure a long-term success in a marketing strategy (Pappu et al 2006). The literature and researchers suggest that there is a strong relation between product satisfaction and brand loyalty, but always highlighting their relation as a unidirectional relationship. In other words, product or service satisfaction has a direct relationship with loyalty, but loyalty has not a significant dependency with satisfaction (Oslen 2005). In other words, brands can have satisfied

Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty are the basic and main success factors in the market