Loyalty

Building loyalty to a brand or company is a challenge. A company must establish trust with its customer while also meeting his or her psychological needs. Once trust has been built, companies must resolve any ethical issues and obligation so consumers can continue to trust the company and its products and services. In addition, some individuals are more likely to be loyal to a brand or company compared to other people. To establish consumer loyalty, a company must determine how to meet all of these challenges. This paper will discuss the issues facing organizations in creating consumer trust and loyalty for it and its products and services.

Today conventional methods of luring customers are fading as the competition in the market is increasing day by day. There are more and more suppliers of the same products and services with almost the same quality; and competitive pricing. To retain the customer has not remained just the matter of producing the best product now. It is also important now that the customer while exiting the outlet has a very positive feeling towards them and it remains so even during the entire usage of the product. Such satisfied customer becomes loyal to organization and can be expected to make a purchase in the future also. But this target is not achieved itself. It is very important for an organization to work fiercely to keep the customers loyal to them. Here the loyalty can be described as the ability of a store or outlet to influence the people enough to make them repurchase from their store. It is a very active process and requires the brand owner to create such an image of the brand and its product that the consumer is filled with the positive emotions towards them.

Companies must gain and retain consumer loyalty - understanding their customer's motivation and behavior to provide real value to the 4 Ps of marketing.

Introduction. Customer loyalty is basically defined as a deep held commitment to re-buy or re-patronize a chosen product/service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same brand-set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behavior (Oliver, 1997). It is a main driver for customer retention, which, in its turn, represents a basic force that accumulates a customer base for the company. As the experience suggests, the presence of the customer base is a valuable asset, because a lot of statistical data and marketing researches have proved that it is harder and much more expensive to acquire a new customer rather than retain an existing one. In this aspect, any business without a focus on customer retention is left on market’s mercy: any market movements will affect the sales in a more intense manner. There is also a risk that your competitor may eventually satisfy the existing customer’s needs and take away a part of your market niche. Moreover, customer loyalty gives a sort of discretion to the company’s R&D policy and marketing strategy: you can try to introduce different features to your products, experiment with different types of ads, and no matter what the results would be, — the customers will stay stick to your production line. Of course, an organization does not have an absolute control over the loyalty of its customers, bec...

There are many description and theory of customer loyalty. We should research and compare which theory is suitable for our business.

Loyalty, it comes in different shapes and is generally seen as a highly regarded human trait. It is defined as a commitment to consistently purchase preferred products or services over and over again (Oliver’s, 1999 p.34). A Loyalty Program (LP) is a marketing exercise designed to reward returning buyers (using discount cards; points cards; club cards / discounts; gifts and exclusive services). Some argue that LPs are only made to make consumers dependent on specific brands. This essay provides evidence that LPs mean to deliver benefits to consumers covering a multitude of their needs beyond mere financial advantage. Further, the paper argues that the choice to join or leave LP ultimately rests with the end users. Frequently multiple brands within one category of products are supported simultaneously.

Consumers exhibit behavioral loyalty when they repeatedly patronize a business, often to the exclusion of competing offers. Although such repeat purchases are desirable from a financial perspective, it is not optimal to take behavioral loyalty at face value, because consumers' repeat purchases may be driven by different reasons, such as favorable attitude, switching barriers, and sunk costs (Dick and Basu 1994). Identifying the drivers of behavioral loyalty can help properly allocate resources among marketing tactics (Seetharaman 2004) and enable the creation of customized marketing programs for maximum effectiveness (pg. 22).

Understanding that the retail industry is always changing and customer spending habits change just as fast, demonstrates that tracking and providing the customer wants, along with exceptional service is imperative. Observing statistics and financials, allow the management team to make corrective action right away before the loss is excessive, as well as address customer services issue that may arise. For example, if the price match option, along with same day pickup does not work, they may offer next day free shipping. The greatest advice for the Target executives is to realize they can never remain stagnant. They are the provider of merchandise, but without the consumer, they are nothing. Therefore, giving the customers what they want, remaining competitive, and providing excellent customer service is the best way to retain customer loyalty.

Lawfer, M., R. (2004). Why customer come back: how to create lasting customer loyalty. United State of America: Career Press.

Customer loyalty according to Loyalty Research Centre (2014) “can be defined as customers continuing to believe that one organisation’s product/service offer remains the best option. It meets their value purchasing decision”. Consumer Loyalty (2014) breaks this definition down to its simplest form by stating, “Consumer loyalty is all about attracting the right customers, getting them to buy, buy often, buy higher quantities and bring even more customers”. They go on to list five ways in which loyalty can be built (see figure 1). However this paper looks to exemplify the benefits that learning theory presents when improving customer loyalty with particular emphasis on behavioural learning and cognitive learning.