The Importance Of Store Loyalty

Store Loyalty

This concept has been explored a lot in the past few decades but it is only recently that store loyalty has emerged as an essential area of marketing research (Hartman & Spiro, 2005; Berry, 2000) - how customers’ develop store loyalty and how that can be maintained are still open questions. Knowing the significance of store loyalty, it is surprising that very little research has been devoted to this area (Wallace, Giese & Johnson, 2004). Differences between the various countries and evolution of retailing (East, Harris, Wilson & Wendy, 1995) should be considered in explaining store loyalty. Since very little is known about the store loyalty issues in the context of Indian retailing, more research is needed in increasing the loyalty and improving the performance of the store. It is worth studying the store loyalty over a period of time because of the dynamics of consumer patronage behaviour.

Store loyalty is the only most important factor leading to the retail success and its longevity. It helps in generating profits through increased revenues and reduces the cost incurred to acquire new customers. For decades the primary objective of the retailers has been to retain customers or generate committed repeat purchases because it requires less marketing resources than gaining new customers

A retailer’s assets are the long term loyal customers who do not want to switch to other stores because of the emotional attachment with that retailer (Chang & Tu, 2005). In order to maintain the loyalty, the retailers should sustain and enhance high level of customer satisfaction by providing what the customers value and what they want most. When customer satisfaction increases, loyalty increases, positive word of mouth recommendation is generated and this will lead to increased customer spending and thus increases the store’s