Customer Loyalty

This book examines the issue of customer loyalty and its importance for companies. The motivation for this research derived from the fact that customer retention is very important for companies’ profitability.In this book the benefits of customer loyalty for companies and for the customers are analyzed, the diverse types of customer loyalty are presented as well as the ways loyalty can be measured. Customers are categorized on the basis of their degree of loyalty and the influence of social factors and of branding on customer loyalty are also examined. In addition the influence of internal quality and of companies’ employees on customer loyalty is analyzed.Issues concerning customer segmentation, the creation of databases with customer information, customers complaining behaviour and companies handling methods of complaints as well as their service evaluation and defection analysis methods for tracing service failure and achieving effective recovery are examined.Factors influencing customer loyalty such as service quality, value, customer satisfaction are also examined.Furthermore, the techniques which can be applied by companies to improve customer loyalty are presented. These include communication with customers, customer relationship management, social media marketing, business intelligence systems, customer involvement in companies’ processes and customer loyalty programmes.Finally, examples of companies pursuing customer satisfaction & loyalty worldwide are presented.