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The aims of the thesis are two-fold. The first aim is to evaluate the antecedents which influence loyalty to Tesco and Tesco Clubcard, contending that customer loyalty is influenced by factors of both a social and marketing nature. The second aim is to assess the nature and type of loyalty exhibited by Tesco customers towards Tesco and Tesco Clubcard. These two aims derive from the research question ‘What are the antecedents of loyalty exhibited by Tesco customers towards Tesco and Tesco Clubcard?’ and are integrated in the research hypotheses to be addressed in the research: H1 satisfaction, trust, commitment, emotional attachment and passion are influential in a customer’s loyalty towards Tesco and Tesco Clubcard, was supported; H2 older females are the demographic group most likely to be loyal to Tesco and Tesco Clubcard, was supported; H3 Tesco customers exhibit ‘incentivised’ loyalty towards Tesco Clubcard, was not supported. The context to this research is that loyalty to grocery retailers is argued to be based on satisfaction, trust and commitment, with loyalty programmes playing an ‘incentivising’ role in customer loyalty. Using 600 questionnaires conducted at 2 Tesco formats, Tesco Extra and Dundee Riverside Extra in Dundee, Scotland with Tesco customers and 20 interviews at the homes of female Tesco customers aged 51 and over, the research drew a number of conclusions. The first conclusion from the research is that there are significant positive relationships between all the tested antecedents (satisfaction, trust, commitment, recommendation, emotional attachment and passion) and loyalty, indicating a level of respondent loyalty which has a ‘social’ dimension to it. However, customer loyalty towards Tesco and Tesco Clubcard is not particularly ‘social’ in nature, it was premised on the antecedents of happiness/satisfaction, trust and to a lesser extent commitment with grocery shopping viewed as a practical activity and different from a social relationship. The second conclusion was that Tesco customers were spuriously loyal to Tesco and Tesco Clubcard, loyal because of convenience and to a lesser extent incentives. By convenience the research revealed Tesco’s ability to create an environment which encouraged customers to rely on their convenient store location and accessible opening hours, operating a near monopoly with its 8 stores across all retail formats in convenient locations in Dundee and Broughty Ferry and the ease in which customers can use Tesco Clubcard and the lack of effort required to access offers. The third conclusion was that Tesco customers were more loyal to Tesco than Tesco Clubcard with the majority of interviewees referring to Tesco and Tesco Clubcard being ‘one entity’. This underlines the perceived limited capacity of Tesco Clubcard to increase frequency to or spend in store and the importance of the peculiarities of Tesco as a grocery retailer in Dundee. By peculiarities this research referred to Tesco’s retail dominance in Dundee in terms of market share, number and location of stores, the staff employed, it’s varied online and offline ‘grocery package’ and its use of the media to remind customers that they are attempting to build a relationship, almost social in nature with their customers, a fact acknowledged by a number of interviewees. The fourth conclusion was that females, particularly those aged 51 and over were the most loyal to Tesco and Tesco Clubcard, argued to be because it was in their nature to invest time and effort into maintaining relationships and friendships which translated into their shopping behaviour. The final conclusion was in terms of the characteristics of a Tesco customer most likely to be loyal, someone who always used Tesco, driving past other grocery retailers to patronise a Tesco store, would recommend Tesco to others, had a family member employed or previously employed by Tesco, owned and always used their Tesco Clubcard, preferred Tesco as a grocery retailer and would not switch their current loyalty from Tesco, frequented the store 1-3 times a week and were aged between 58 and 63. These conclusions contribute to existing research in the areas of customer loyalty and loyalty programmes in three parts. First, this study consolidates and takes research forward in the areas of loyalty programmes, customer loyalty and the role of age and gender in customer loyalty. Second, the research identifies the peculiarities of Tesco in Dundee and the capacity of these peculiarities to engender convenient loyalty among customers. Finally, as one of only a handful of studies on Tesco and Tesco Clubcard the results should prove useful to academics and practitioners alike given the high levels of interest into why Tesco and Tesco Clubcard are so successful in the UK grocery retail sector.

M.Com. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This research report examines the effect of the customer orientation of an Information Systems (IS) department on its performance. Customer orientation has been cited as a contributor to and determinant of organisational performance in marketing literature. This study determined that this is applicable to the IS context. Customer orientation literature from the marketing context was examined and customer orientation measures from marketing adapted for the IS context. The key dimensions of customer orientation from marketing literature are communication, understanding, service delivery, service systems, skills, innovation, alignment and leadership support. Through a study of 98 South African organisations, this study found that there is a direct relationship between the customer orientation of IS departments and IS department performance. This study contributes towards encouraging customer orientation in IS departments and bringing to the forefront the value of customer orientation in Information Systems management.

Customer satisfaction and retention are critical for retail banks. Service quality is a major determinant of customer satisfaction, and is increasingly being seen as a key strategic differentiator within the financial services sector worldwide. However, little is known about service quality in an African context for retail banking. This research assesses customer expectations based on service quality factors for retail banks across ten countries in Africa. Specifically, the objectives are to determine whether cross-national differences in customer service expectations exist in the African retail banking sector, what the relative importance of key service dimensions in African retail banking are, and whether these service expectations are constant over time. A questionnaire based survey of 4035 respondents across ten African countries was used. The determinants of external service quality were identified, which include service quality dimensions and respective underlying attributes. The SERVQUAL model developed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry (1990) was adopted for modelling the data. The results were rescaled to interval data and then analysed by way of ANOVA testing, t-testing and rank ordering. The research shows, with the exception of the Responsiveness service expectation dimension, that there are no commonalities of service expectations among the African countries of this study. The implications of this are significant for managers of multinational retail banks in Africa wishing to improve the quality of service delivery. The Responsiveness service expectation dimension was found to consistently be the most important expectation across all countries. Thereafter, the relative importance of subsequent service dimensions varied considerably for each country, but, on average, ranked as follows: Responsiveness, Reliability, Tangibles, Assurance and, finally, Empathy.

Thesis (D.B.A.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / Quality management has become a key competitive factor (Garvin, 1988). Product design quality requires incorporating the wants and needs of the customer base into new product development, and product conformance quality relies upon identifying and resolving flaws found in the products. Collecting this feedback requires that the boundary between the customer and the firm be spanned, and applying the feedback requires that it be communicated to the functional group that can effect product improvement. Through its constant interaction with customers, the customer support group is well positioned to sense this customer feedback and communicate it to the product development group. This dissertation examined the strategic role of the customer support organization within software companies as a quality assurance agent. While traditionally viewed as a rectifier of external quality failures, the research model proposed that customer support could also serve appraisal and preventive quality assurance roles through its boundary spanning activities. A small sample, comparative case study tested hypotheses about customer support's boundary spanning and provided for grounded theory building. The research revealed three primary findings. First, service delivery designs that included higher levels of customer contact allowed the service agents to sense a broader range of customer issues. Second, product quality increased when the customer data were collected in a detailed format structured to meet the practices of the development group. Third, product quality also increased when the customer support group had more involvement in product management decisions throughout the product development cycle. Through grounded theory-building, the research identified contextual factors that fostered a preventative quality assurance role for customer support. / 2031-01-01

Cheng Yuet Yee. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 41-44). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / ABSTRACT (ENGLISH) --- p.i / ABSTRACT (CHINESE) --- p.ii / ACKNOWLEDGEMENT --- p.iii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iv / LIST OF TABLES --- p.v / INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.3 / Definition of Loyalty Programs --- p.3 / Background of Loyalty Program Research --- p.3 / Structural Elements of Loyalty Programs --- p.5 / Extension of Consumer-Focused Loyalty Program Research --- p.13 / THEORETICAL FRAMWORK --- p.15 / Motivation as a Function of Goal Distance --- p.15 / Goal Mechanism --- p.17 / EXPERIMENT ONE --- p.21 / Overview --- p.21 / Scenarios --- p.21 / Measures --- p.23 / Results --- p.23 / Discussion --- p.24 / EXPERIEMNT TWO --- p.26 / Overview --- p.26 / Results and Discussion --- p.26 / GENERAL DISCUSSION --- p.32 / Summary of Findings --- p.32 / Theoretical Implications --- p.32 / Managerial Implications --- p.36 / Limitations --- p.36 / APPENDIX (Sample Scenarios) --- p.39 / Condition: Early Stage (one stamp) and Unit Value Absent --- p.39 / Condition: Late Stage (eight stamps) and Unit Value Present --- p.40 / REFERENCES --- p.41

A configuração do capitalismo atual, a globalização de mercados, o acirramento da concorrência, a velocidade de mudança e os gerentes cada vez mais cobrados por resultados e sustentabilidade das tomadas de decisão têm impelido as empresas a investir cada vez mais em sistemas de relacionamento para conhecer clientes. Os clientes são a mola propulsora de qualquer empresa e sem eles a empresa não possui valor algum. O objetivo desse trabalho foi explorar os fatores que impactam e determinam o valor do cliente para a empresa e/ou acionistas. Com base em fundamentação teórica, foram evidenciadas as principais pesquisas, destacando as contribuições empíricas de cada caso e a contemplação dos vetores de valor para a empresa e/ou acionistas. Resultados sugerem que o advento da tecnologia da informação nas empresas tem proporcionado a produção de conhecimento para a tomada de decisão mais estruturada em relação à gestão de clientes por valor. Foram evidenciadas (9) nove pesquisas sobre análise de padrão de lucratividade, (8) oito sobre otimização de alocação de recursos, (5) cinco sobre aquisição, retenção e efeitos sociais e (4) quatro sobre avaliação de empresas por meio de clientes. Cliente é definido como ativo intangível na medida em que otimiza a utilização dos recursos para a cocriação de valor para a empresa e/ou acionistas. / The current capitalism configuration, markets globalization, tight competitiveness, the change speed, managers more and more called by results and account for their decision have been forcing companies to invest more and more in customer relationship systems. The customers are the bottom line of any company and without them the company doesn\'t possess any value. The objective of this work was to explore the factors that impact and determine the customer\'s value for the company and/or shareholders. Based on theoretical, it was evidenced the mainly researches, dealing with empirical contribution of each case and the value vectors contemplation for company and/or shareholders. Results suggest that the introducing information technology in the companies has been providing the knowledge production for decision models more structured for managing customers by value. Nine researches were evidenced on profitability pattern analysis, eight on optimize resources allocation, five on acquisition and retention and social effects and four about firm evaluation through customers. Customer is defined as in-tangible assets as long as optimizes the utilization of resources for the co-creation of value for the company and/or shareholders.

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ABSTRACT Providing good customer service is crucial to many commercial organizations. There are different means through which the service can be provided, such as Ecommerce, call centres or face-to-face. Although some service is provided through electronic or telephone-based interaction, it is common that the service is provided through human agents. In addition, many customer service interactions also involve a computer, for example, an information system where a travel agent finds suitable flights. This thesis seeks to understand the three channels of customer service interactions between the agent, customer and computer: Customer-Agent-Computer Interaction (CACI). A set of ethnographic studies were conducted at call centres to gain an initial understanding of CACI and to investigate the customer-computer channel. The findings revealed that CACI is more complicated than traditional CHI, because there is a second person, the customer, involved in the interaction. For example, the agent provides a lot of feedback about the computer to the customer, such as, I am waiting for the computer . Laboratory experiments were conducted to investigate the customer-computer channel by adding non-verbal auditory feedback about the computer directly to the customers. The findings showed only a small insignificant difference in task completion time and subjective satisfaction. There were indications that there was an improvement in flow of communication. Experiments were conducted to investigate how the two humans interact over two different communication modes: face-to-face and telephone. Findings showed that there was a significantly shorter task completion time via telephone. There was also a difference in style of communication, with face-to-face having more single activities, such as, talking only, while in the telephone condition there were more dual activities, for instance talking while also searching. There was only a small difference in subjective satisfaction. To investigate if the findings from the laboratory experiment also held in a real situation and to identify potential improvement areas, a series of studies were conducted: observations and interviews at multiple travel agencies, one focus group and a proof of concept study at one travel agency. The findings confirmed the results from the laboratory experiments. A number of potential interface improvements were also identified, such as, a history mechanism and sharing part of the computer screen with the customer at the agent's discretion. The results from the work in this thesis suggest that telephone interaction, although containing fewer cues, is not necessarily an impoverished mode of communication. Telephone interaction is less time consuming and more task-focused. Further, adding non-verbal auditory feedback did not enhance the interaction. The findings also suggest that customer service CACI is inherently different in nature and that there are additional complications with traditional CHI issues.