The variability of attitudinal repeat-rates

Consumers' expressed attitudes to brands are often thought to show their commitment and loyalty. But when consumers were re-interviewed, on average only about 50% gave the same attitudinal Yes or No response as before, implying that attitude beliefs are often not very firmly held. This paper reports that the attitudinal repeat-rates for different brands vary about this overall 50% average. These variations for different brands are, however, systematic. They are largely dependent upon the level of initial attitudinal responses, as a further instance of Double Jeopardy effects. The variation of repeat-rates is therefore not brand-specific and it does not reflect idiosyncratic differences in brand loyalty.     

消费者创新性对顾客忠诚的影响

近年来,随着买方市场特征的日益显著,企业竞争策略开始从单纯的争夺顾客向保留顾客转变。鉴于当前消费者创新性对顾客忠诚的重要作用,研究消费者创新性对顾客忠诚的影响,对于我们更好地认识顾客忠诚形成机制并指导顾客关系管理实践具有十分重要的意义。基于消费者视角,借助计划理论与调节聚焦理论探讨消费者创新性对顾客忠诚影响的内在机理可以发现,消费者创新性对顾客忠诚具有负向影响,且这种负向效应不受顾客满意度水平高低影响。同时,消费者创新性对顾客忠诚两个维度的影响存在差异,即消费者创新性负向影响行为忠诚,而对态度忠诚并无显著影响。考虑到消费者创新性对顾客忠诚及其具体维度的影响,为更好地进行企业顾客关系管理,必须关注目标顾客消费者创新性程度,特别是重视目标市场中消费者创新性程度较高的那部分顾客。企业在追求顾客忠诚时,不能仅仅关注顾客满意,还要充分认识消费者创新性对顾客忠诚的负向影响,将注意力转向企业外部,关注消费者创新性程度,采取适当的营销策略合理防止消费者创新性程度较高的顾客发生购买行为转移。     

Exploring the impact of product service quality on buyer commitment and loyalty in B TO B relationships

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand and empirically test causal relationships among components of product service quality and commitment and buyer loyalty in business-to-business (B to B) relationships.

Methodology/approach: Data were collected through a web-based survey from 314 buyers of B to B manufacturers in Korea.

Findings: Product quality enhances all three types of commitment in B to B relationships, service quality is positively associated with affective commitment, and support quality has a significantly positive effect on affective and normative commitment. Also, the moderating effects of competitive intensity are significant. If competitive intensity is low in the buyer’s market, product quality and service quality play important roles in deriving buyer commitment; however, if competitive intensity is high, support quality is effective in maintaining long-term committed relationships with buyers.

Research implications: To fully consider product service quality in this study, we established support quality, product quality, and service quality as discrete components of product service quality.

Practical implications: Previous quality-related works have focused on products and services with little research about support activities, and the literature is lacking empirical analyses of support activities. However, this study elucidates the importance of operational and technical support activities in B to B relationships. Specifically, in a fiercely competitive market, a high-quality consumer support strategy is shown to be highly effective in maintaining long-term committed relationships with buyers.

Originality/value/contribution: We analyzed the relationships among components of product service quality and commitment and buyer loyalty in B to B transactions. Our detailed results will help firms develop context-specific quality management strategies at the product service level in order to strengthen customer loyalty.     

Exploring the link between customer experience–loyalty–consumer spend

Customer experience has drawn significant interest in recent times from both academicians as well as practitioners. There is growing understanding in literature that attitudes are formed by past and present experiences and are expected to change as a function of consumer experience. Attitudes are described as one of the most important determinant of the behaviour. Dick and Basu (1994) were precise in suggesting that a favourable attitude and repeat purchase were required to define loyalty as they viewed loyalty in an attitude-behaviour framework, loyalty is an important concept related with repetitive purchasing behaviour and high Consumer spend. Literature suggests that building loyalty is found in successful management of Customer experience yet little research exist that incorporated this variable into explaining customer loyalty therefore signifying a gap in existing substantive knowledge. The current paper studies the impact of customer experience on attitudinal and behaviour loyalty. The study extends the findings by adding an observed behaviour- share of spend in the frame work. The present study will provide valuable insights to theorist in the retail context as well as practitioners ability to develop more effective strategies.     

Logistics service quality and buyer–customer relationships: the moderating role of technology in B2B and B2C contexts

Logistics service quality (LSQ) concentrates on the results of the company's performance in the process of bringing merchandise and information from the company's warehouse to customers' home. There is neither consensus about its dimensions nor on how it might be influenced by technological solutions. The present article aims at identifying the main antecedents of LSQ, examining the influence of technology and its effects in terms of customer commitment and loyalty in B2B and B2C contexts. As a result, similar patterns are observed in the relationships of LSQ–commitment–loyalty with mixed evidence about the moderating role of information technology.     

商业友谊对关系品质和顾客忠诚的影响之研究

过去友谊的探讨只停留在社会性方面,很少论及它在商业活动中的经济性交换特性,所以相关理论未推广至商业环境,因此,顾客在消费过程中与服务人员建立的朋友关系即商业友谊的探讨将有助于弥补和完善这一缺口和理论。本文将对商业友谊这一重要的营销关系进行探讨,并通过以美容院为研究对象的实证研究,分析它与关系品质和顾客忠诚的影响,揭示商业友谊对服务性企业的重要性。     

The Relationship between Consumers' Unethical Behavior and Customer Loyalty in a Retail Environment

This paper investigates the relationship between two outcomes of relationship marketing – affective commitment and behavioral loyalty – and consumers' unethical behavior. The main objective of the study is to assess whether affective commitment and behavioral loyalty to a store translate into more ethical behavior towards that store, controlling for the variables of age, gender, and ethical beliefs. The study does not rely on a single measurement tool, but is based on ten months' panel data and three different mail surveys targeted at 359 Belgian households. The results provide support for our hypothesis that affective commitment is indeed negatively correlated with consumers' unethical behavior. The same conclusion could not be drawn for the relationship between behavioral loyalty and consumers' unethical behavior. No significant relationship was detected, not even in situations where affective commitment was high. The results hold major implications for retailing practice.     

Relationship intention and relationship quality as predictors of clothing retail customers’ loyalty

Retailers endeavour to establish and maintain strong relationships with customers in order to build customer loyalty. Unfortunately, such endeavours are not always successful as not all retail customers reciprocate retailers’ relationship efforts. Customers’ intentions to engage in relationships with retailers (i.e. relationship intentions) should thus be the starting point in building customer loyalty. Moreover, customers’ perceptions of the strength of their relationship with a retailer (i.e. relationship quality) should also be considered when building customer loyalty. The purpose of this study is to determine whether clothing retail customers’ relationship intentions and relationship quality, individually and in combination, predict their loyalty to clothing retailers. Data were collected from 511 respondents in South Africa’s greater Tshwane metropolitan area. From a hierarchical multiple regression analysis, it was found that clothing retail customers’ relationship intentions and relationship quality are individually, and in combination, predictors of their loyalty to the retailer. Results furthermore indicate that relationship quality mediates the relationship between relationship intention and customer loyalty. The findings highlight the importance of first determining customers’ relationship intentions, and then reinforcing positive perceptions of relationship quality when building customer loyalty.     

Internet service providers' service quality and its effect on customer loyalty of different usage patterns

This study attempts to investigate the dimensions of an ISP's service quality, and their effects on customer loyalty in high-tech services. Data was obtained from 1231 internet users. The analyses include segmenting ISPs' customers on the basis of their usage pattern and evaluating their perceptions of Internet service quality dimensions. Through the use of structural equation modelling and bias correct bootstrapping techniques, the study confirms that service quality dimensions can influence both attitudinal and behavioural loyalty. These effects, however, are different across different groups of ISP customers. The contribution of the present paper stems from the modelling of mediation effects and the incorporation of Internet usage that can help better explain the impact of service quality dimensions on customers' loyalty in high-tech service settings.     

Determinants of attitudinal loyalty in Nigerian telecom service sector: Does commitment play a mediating role?

This paper explores the mediating role of commitment in the relationships between service assurance, service reliability and attitudinal loyalty. A quantitative cross-sectional data generated from 138 experienced users of telecommunication services formed the final database. Attitudinal loyalty was found to be a process-based construct that starts from service assurance and proceeds to service reliability and finally to customer commitment and loyalty. The entire process explained 69 per cent of the total variance in attitudinal loyalty. The relationship between service assurance and attitudinal loyalty was insignificant. No support was found for the proposed mediating role of customer commitment in the relationship between service assurance and attitudinal loyalty. In contrast, the relationship between service assurance and attitudinal loyalty was fully mediated by service reliability. Finally, service reliability was both directly and indirectly related to attitudinal loyalty through customer commitment. To attract customers' attitudinal loyalty therefore, services companies especially those within the low-contact service category must deliver reliable services and make efforts to assure customers that their services are reliable. The implications for customer loyalty theory and future research are also discussed.     

A New Look at the Antecedents and Consequences of Relationship Quality in the Hotel Service Environment

Abstract

As economic conditions improve, hotels are investing in new ways to improve service quality and perceived value that hopefully will lead to better customer satisfaction and loyalty. This study took a new look, with newly developed scales, at the antecedents and consequences of relationship quality in the hotel service environment to shed new light on the factors hotels have to deal with to achieve their objective of satisfied and loyal customers. Using a structural equation model, it was determined that the tangible and intangible factors of perceived value, timeliness, and hotel facilities are antecedents of hotel quality. Hotel quality, subsequently, is a determinant of both customer satisfaction and loyalty. However, consistent with previous research, customer satisfaction is not a guarantee of customer loyalty.     

A Measurement of Bank Efficiency,Ownership and Productivity Changes in Taiwan

German consulting engineering firms currently face great difficulties in competing in globalised markets. They are comparatively small. This article asks what the reasons for this situation are and whether there are options for political assistance to help the trade – perhaps Germany can learn from other countries – and describes the results of a benchmarking study which compares the situation of German firms with that of companies in the US, UK and France. The factors that may possibly be important for international competitiveness are analysed. The main result of the study is that the present weakness of German consulting engineering is caused by their lack of adaptation to the needs of the new globalised markets. German firms suffer now from the rather good and secure business opportunities which they have enjoyed during the phase of ‘Aufbau Ost’ in eastern Germany in the 1990s. They have somewhat missed the restructuring that became necessary. Hence, German consulting engineering has to do the bulk of restructuring itself in order to become competitive again.     

Reviving brand loyalty: A reconceptualization within the framework of consumer-brand relationships

This paper uses the perspective of interpersonal relationship theory to critically examine, reposition, and extend the notion of brand loyalty. Depth interviews among eight coffee-consuming adults who qualified as brand loyal by traditional criteria provide the data. The result is a deeper appreciation of the character of loyal consumer-brand relations and a sharper awareness of the limitations to understanding that current theoretical frameworks impose. Specifically, the authors suggest that: (1) not all loyal brand relationships are alike, in strength or in character; (2) many brand relationships not identified as ‘loyal’ according to dominant theoretical conceptions are especially meaningful from the cunsumer's point of view; and (3) current approaches to classification accept some brand relationships that, upon close scrutiny, do not possess assumed characteristics of ‘loyalty’ or ‘strength’ at all. Ideas stemming from a reframing of loyalty as one component in a multifaceted construct of relationship strength are put forth, encouraging a move from the metaphor of ‘loyalty’ to the broader notion of ‘relationships’ that encompasses it.     

运用CRM提升客户忠诚度的途径探讨

提升客户忠诚度是当前营销领域的一个热点和难点,良好客户服务是提升客户忠诚度的最佳方法。为营造以客户为中心的业务流程、建设客户数据库、完善客户服务、开展客户分析和个性化服务,在CRM支持下提高客户忠诚度的途径,运用CRM中的分析型功能收集、整合和分析客户数据以提高客户忠诚度。     

培育合理的客户忠诚

本文认为,客户的忠诚是相对的,企业没有必要使所有的客户都维持高度忠诚,否则就有可能跌入客户忠诚陷阱。企业应根据不同客户的实际情况,在客户忠诚、客户关系成本和客户忠诚成本之间寻找较好的平衡,培育合理的客户忠诚。当企业愿意支付的客户关系成本刚好能补偿客户的忠诚成本和保留收入时,客户忠诚成本的灵敏系数或最小忠诚成本系数越小,企业能够培育的合理客户忠诚度越高;当企业愿意支付的客户关系成本大于客户的忠诚成本和保留收入时,客户关系成本的灵敏系数或最小关系成本系数越小,企业能够培育的合理客户忠诚度越高。