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Abstract
The phenomenon of loyalty has received a great deal of interest among marketers. Customer loyalty is a customer's sense of belonging or identification with the employees, services or products of a company. These feelings have a direct impact on customer behavior and lead to the intention of repurchasing products and services and recommending other to purchase through words of mouth, which is the goal of industry. In general terms, customer loyalty is a complex subject to study since it comprises of many dimensions and its conceptualization has been dominated by the behavioral and attitudinal approaches. This article elaborates the behavioral and attitudinal aspects of loyalty on the grounds of research literature.
Introduction
The phenomenon of loyalty received a great deal of interest among marketers, (Reddy et al 2011) though there is growing interest in customer loyalty in recent years Kuusik (2007) but during 1980s customer loyalty was also in the minds of most marketers and many companies on customer relationship management programs spent millions on building customer loyalty (Pitta et al 2006). Generally, customer loyalty is an intention of repurchasing products and services of a specific firm, which is the goal of the firm (Pi, & Huang 2011) Customers Loyalty has attitudinal and behavioral dimensions. According to behavioral approach customers remain loyal till they buy and use a product or service of the firm (Clottey, 2008).
BOSE & RAO (2011) and Musriha (2012) opined that in the business context, customer loyalty is the commitment held by customers to do business with a particular firm which effects in repeat purchases or subscribe to its goods and services in the future (It is behavioral aspect). It also results in recommendation of products of the firm (goods and services) to friends, colleagues and associates (It is attitudinal aspect). Similarly Krumay & Brandtweiner (2010) expressed the customer loyalty as one of the key factors of the success of a company.
According to Pitta et al (2006) for many companies the brand loyalty or customer loyalty issue is, in behavioral terms, just repeat purchasing. In fact, most company efforts solely aim at increasing the repeat purchases percentage among existing customers.
Chen & Ching (2007) visiting literature extracted that customer loyalty is a deep commitment to re-purchase or re-patronize...