-
Essay / Customer Loyalty - 2200
Customer loyalty has been a major asset and unanimously recognized as a valuable asset in competitive markets according to Srivastava, Shervani and Fahey, 2000. As a result, it becomes more important to empower to customers. loyalty panel, particularly when consumers face very low switching or moving costs to another product or service, because they are not bound by a contract (Shapiro & Vivian, 2000). This also becomes important in competitive markets due to the availability of more lucrative and easily available options. The concept of customer loyalty has been present in all parts/activities of many industries over the past decade (Lewis, 1997). Loyalty development involves building and maintaining a relationship with a customer, which leads to the repetitive purchase of products or services over a period of time. A loyal customer base also allows companies to offer their expertise and skills to other business issues (Gefen, 2002; Rowley & Dawes, 2000). In order to understand what drives customer loyalty or how your business defines customer loyalty, we can look at the behavioral side of it. Customers can show their loyalty in several ways. They may prefer to stay with a company, whether this persistence is distinct from a relationship or not, or increase the number of purchases, or do both (Reinartz and Kumar, 2003; Rowley and Dawes, 2000). The purpose of this research is to relate loyalty to emerging theories of CRM (Macintosh & Lockshin, 1997) or, as a key component, of effective CRM. Although some authors, such as Dick & Basu (1994), have a different view of each element of it and make a distinction between brand loyalty, store loyalty, seller loyalty, product and service ...... middle of paper.. ....the cognitive and affective elements section was analyzed by Oliver (1999). Behavioral loyalty can sometimes lead customers to provide exceptional value to the company through positive word of mouth studied by Dick and Basu, 1994; Hagel and Armstrong, 1997; Reichheld, 2003. Disappointment in the behavioral loyalty relationship could lead to false loyalty (Dick & Basu, 1994). So, to achieve true loyalty, businesses must in tandem focus on building behavioral and attitudinal loyalty. Thus, if we review both the service management literature and the marketing literature, we 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 there is relatively little empirical research on these relationships to date (Storbacka et al.., 1994)