Customer loyalty: how to measure it, understand it and use it
to drive business success.
 
Since it is now widely recognised that it is much less costly and much more profitable to keep existing customers than to win new ones, customer retention has become a major goal for most organisations. In principle it’s simple. You just have to keep your existing customers. But how? Many companies have adopted the idea of customer loyalty to spearhead their retention strategies, but it is very doubtful whether the loyalty concept is fully understood or effectively implemented by many who embrace it. 
 
Loyalty is a historical word, rooted in feudal times when allegiance to the sovereign was fundamental to the success, perhaps even the survival of the state. The Oxford Dictionary’s definition of the word ‘loyal’ is:
“True or faithful (to duty, love or obligation); steadfast in allegiance, devoted to the legitimate sovereign or government of one’s country.”
On that basis, why should anybody be loyal to a commercial enterprise? What
legitimacy does the enterprise possess? Why do its customers have any obligation to show allegiance to it? Of course they don’t, and the more the education, confidence and power of consumers have grown, the more they realise it. In fact, in 英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】the twenty-first century it is the other way round. It is the customer who is king and the supplier that needs to be loyal to its customers! 
 
It is the woeful misunderstanding of the loyalty concept amongst senior managers (and especially amongst the marketing profession – the very people who ought to know better), which has been responsible for the plethora of misguided strategies which have been introduced in the name of securing customer loyalty. Many involve cheap attempts to bribe the customer. How many leaders have secured the long term loyalty of their citizens / followers / employees by such tactics? Whether you are president of a country or a company, loyalty has to be earned. Why should increasingly educated and confident customers continue to give their business to the same supplier? The answer is simple. To secure customer retention in a competitive market the supplier’s total value
package has to match customers’ requirements better than anything offered by
competitors.