Why Customer Loyalty Should Influence Marketing Strategy

Thus, companies seek to strengthen customer loyalty. Brand loyalty is considered to tilt the consumer to purchase the package / product specific brand (Jacoby and Chestnut, 1978). Later, Oliver (1997) defined loyalty as "a deeply held commitment to REBUY or repatronize preferred product / service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same brand set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing activities, which would result in causing switching behavior "(p. 34). This conceptual definition covers two different aspects of loyalty: the behavioral. This is consistent with an integrated conceptual framework proposed by Dick and Basu (1994), that customer loyalty is regarded as a "power relationship between the relative position of the individual and repeat

Over the decades there were tremendous amount of challenges for every business. Customers have more knowledge, they have more options, and they have higher expectations. Customers are more informed with the humungous development in technology. Having more options in front of them, expectations has surpassed in retail industry. Loyalty is a customer having faith that your organization’s product or services offered is the best for them. It is the process of tapping the buying pattern of customers in a store based on their preferences. Customer loyalty is significant because it is economical to retain the old customers rather than acquiring new customers. So, organizations employ loyalty programs which reward customers for their repeat business.

From an organisations point of view, especially in the short term, it would seem more appropriate to concentrate on behavioural loyalty because this is reflected in sales behaviour. Such behaviour is easily measured compared to components of attitudinal loyalty and matches key managerial performance indicators. Attitudinal measures may also not reflect consumer’s actions when the consumer is confronted with real choice. However, from a longer term view and especially from a CRM viewpoint, it is also vitally important to measure attitudinal loyalty. Attitudinal loyalty is composed of commitment and trust in the brand and/or organisation which will have impacts on sales both in the short and longer term. This type of loyalty is more likely to be an indicator of the potential longer term relationships that will be possible with given customers. Attitudinal loyalty is also likely to have influence on word of mouth and customer advocacy which may lead to indirect impacts on longer term sales or on costs of servicing

7. Consumer loyalty needs to be increased: - The main recommendation is to increase the good relationship with the consumer at all. The reason is that if there is a good relationship between the organisation and the consumer then the benefit will be to the organisation as good relationship sometimes helps to reduce expense on the other factors like huge expense that is done on the advertising of the brand of the organisation. In Asian markets, areas such as relationship building and a ‘benefit-the-country’ attitude are sometimes more important than investing enormous amounts on advertising (LaForet and Chen, 2012).

According Baker M (2000), loyalty schemes is the “Overt attempt of exchanging partnership to build a long term relationship association, characterised by purposeful co-operation and mutual dependence on the development of social, as well as structural bonds with consumer”.

Consumer loyalty => We put our customers' needs first and endeavor to surpass their desires.

The definition of Brand Loyalty is when consumers become committed to your brand and make repeat purchases over time. Brand loyalty is a result of consumer behavior and is affected by a persons preferences. Loyal customers will consistently purchase products from their preferred brands, regardless of convenience or price. Companies will often use different marketing strategies to cultivate loyal customers, be it is through loyalty programs (i.e. rewards programs) or trials and incentives (ex. samples and free gifts). (Investopedia)

It’s essential that companies or businesses today listen to their customers. No company or business today can afford to disregard the importance of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Aren’t they the same thing? No, they are absolutely not and they are enormously

(2006 ) studied and investigated the utility of applying the Investment Model to reveal the psychological processes underlying loyalty formation and an understanding of the structure and antecedents of loyalty .Specifically, the dimensionality of the loyalty construct was studied. Perceived quality and perceived value, two of satisfaction’s related constructs, have also been suggested to either directly or indirectly influence customer loyalty. Cognitive, Affective and conative loyalty together help in formation of attitudinal loyalty which further impacts the behavioral loyalty of customers.

Customer will regularly buy from a repertoire of goods and services within a given field. Therefore customer loyalty programmes may engender behavioural loyalty but they may not guarantee attitudinal loyalty when a competitive brand develops its own loyalty schemes or the customers cashes in his or her rewards (Cook, 1997). Wal-Mart emphasizes that keep a good relationship

Dick and Basu (1994, p. 99) define loyalty as “the strength of the realtionship between an individual’s realtive attitude and their repeat

the effect on buyer and salesperson relationship through customer loyalty, in the Malaysian retail sector. Oliver’s (1997)

Objective 1: To indicate any relationship between loyalty and such pshycological factors as satisfaction, importance of relationship and others.

The behavior in which a consumer keeps buying a product time and again instead of buying products from other competitive companies is called Brand Loyalty. Brand loyalty can often be termed as Customer Loyalty, Brand Commitment, Product Loyalty etc. Brand Loyalty is seen among consumers when they realize that the product is better than the other products that are available in the market. This affinity of a consumer towards a particular product is considered to be brand loyalty. Although, this consumer behavior is not limited to a simple repetition of a purchase, there is also a psychological reasoning behind the consumers’ affinity towards behavior.

A similar research Loyalty in Retail: A strategic success or a management failure states that successful loyalty programs do not exist in vacuum. The loyalty cards provided by the retailers are compared to the hammer. Just as a hammer does not build a house, a loyalty card does not build customer loyalty. Customer loyalty has been used as a strategic approach in increasing customer value and thus providing a good customer experience but it doesn’t work alone. A brand value has to be created in which involvement of the staff, quality of the products, knowledge about the customers etc. are required.