Background: Nowadays with the very competitive business environment, it is essential for companies to gain loyal customers. Loyalty programs are one of the tools at the disposition of companies to attract and retain their customers. The relationship between customer loyalty and some socio-demographics factors have been a subject of researches but the specific relationship between socio-demographics factors and customer loyalty programs has not been studied yet. This study is going to try to fulfil this gap. Purpose: To study the influence of socio-demographic factors on customers’ expectations of their loyalty programs and on their loyalty. Research questions: 1. Which socio-demographic factors are influencing customers’ expectations of their loyalty programs? 2. Which socio-demographic factors are influencing program loyalty and company loyalty? Methodology: Quantitative research. Conclusion: It is possible to say that all socio-demographic factors studied have an influence on at least one of the expectations of customers concerning their loyalty programs and on their loyalty too. Those factors are then really important for a company to look at when they start a loyalty program or when they try to improve it.

In Chapter 1, I analyze a setting where a pair of retailers which sell unrelated products at the same location (e.g., a strip mall) compete with other retailers located at a different strip mall across town by jointly introducing a bundling discount while independently setting their respective stand-alone prices. Customers who shop from multiple strip malls rather than only one incur additional exogenous shopping costs. I first show that if each retailer chooses a bundling discount non-cooperatively, then the equilibrium bundling discounts will be zero. In contrast, pairs of firms located at the same strip mall always find it profitable to jointly offer positive bundling discounts in order to encourage customer loyalty. Moreover, I demonstrate as a comparative static that as the shopping costs increase, pairs of firms have less incentive to make joint bundling arrangements in equilibrium. If only one pair can introduce a bundling discount, in equilibrium while total industry profit rises, consumer surplus and welfare fall with the increase in shopping costs. When both pairs offer the bundling discounts, all consumers buy a bundle in equilibrium. Thus, the presence of a positive shopping cost does not affect any industry variables in equilibrium except stand-alone equilibrium prices which decrease with the shopping costs so that the standard Hotelling result extends to this case. In Chapter 2, I investigate the effects of shopping costs on the merger incentives of these unrelated retailers in the context of bundling. I demonstrate that contrary to one’s initial conjecture, pairs of firms do not merge to internalize the externalities created by shopping costs and bundling discounts. While consumers are better off with the merger outcome, consumer and total welfare fall significantly when firms stay independent in equilibrium. In Chapter 3, I analyze how legacy carriers and Southwest Airlines respond to the threat of AirTran Airways entry. My estimation results suggest that equilibrium prices of legacy carriers are on average lower in response to the threat of entry by AirTran as expected, whereas those of Southwest are on average higher. This robust result on AirTran and Southwest competition echoes the pricing behavior in the pharmaceutical industry where brand-name prices increase before and after generic entry. The incumbent low cost carrier Southwest, especially with the incapability to further lower its prices significantly, may still find it profitable to capitalize on its loyal price-inelastic (i.e., high-end) customers. Anticipating a definite price cut from AirTran, however, the high-end customers of legacy carriers may be more sensitive to price differentials offered by AirTran relative to the high-end customers of Southwest because of the size of the offer. Hence, legacy carriers, in contrast, simply reduce their prices in response to threat of AirTran entry to keep these valuable customers. / text

This research makes a case for treating an electronic commerce web site as a social actor and argues that LT-enabled support for personalization systems and virtual communities has a significant impact on the perceived communication characteristics of a web site. This research studied the impact of two communication characteristics - adaptiveness and connectivity of a web site. Adaptiveness indicates the extent to which a web site adapts itself to support the needs of its customers whereas connectivity refers to the ability of a web site to link potential customers with other visitors. Further, synthesizing research from communication, media choice and technology adoption literatures, this thesis proposes social presence as the experiential construct and perceived usefulness as the utilitarian construct that will mediate the relationship between communication characteristics of a medium and customer loyalty. A survey and a laboratory experiment were conducted to test the linkages proposed above. The survey showed that while adaptiveness impacted on both social presence and perceived usefulness, connectivity had an impact only on social presence and an insignificant impact on perceived usefulness. Social presence did not influence perceived usefulness while both social presence and perceived usefulness had a significant impact on customer loyalty. By filtering Amazon.com real-time, the lab experiment was conducted to specifically study the causal impact of a web site's support for personalization and virtual communities. Support for personalization had a strong impact on adaptiveness, whereas support for consumer reviews had strong effect on connectivity. Interestingly, support for personalization had a weaker, but significant effect on connectivity and support for consumer reviews had a similar effect on adaptiveness. Data from the experiment was also analyzed using mediation analyses as well as partial least square analysis to show that the general pattern of results observed were consistent across methods thus improving the confidence in the research model proposed. This research by proposing social presence as a crucial experiential predictor of customer loyalty has addressed an important gap that exists in our current understanding of web users' behavior. It also makes a key contribution by empirically showing that a web site's support for IT-enabled personalization and virtual communities do have a significant impact not only on the perceived communication characteristics, but also on customer loyalty through social presence and perceived usefulness.

Much research show that strategies of personalization aiming to meet customers' needs and behaviors are an important aspect to influence the competitiveness within an industry. However there is a gap of studies on how airlines use customer involvement for creating personalized strategies in the field of e-commerce while enhancing the competitive advantage. This study is aims to describe how airlines can create personalized e-commerce strategies by considering the customer involvement in order to enhance their competitiveness. In conjunction with this first assumption the study aims to demonstrate how airlines could increase their customer loyalty by implementing the concept of customer relationship management (CRM) within their e-commerce strategies. A theoretical framework has been developed derived from a review of the existing literature in order to describe how airlines can use personalization as a strategy in e-commerce to develop a competitive advantage.  A qualitative multiple-case study has been chosen for this study. Three companies have been studied within the European airline industry and have been led by a deductive approach which will aim to investigate the theoretical framework.The analysis of empirical findings revealed some relevant conclusions, which can bring value to the research area, and also to the practice. The main findings show that airlines are involving customers into their e-commerce strategies in various forms and different levels regarding a specific project. One of the major result of this thesis is that airlines seem to focus on point of contacts with customers external to the e-commerce platform.

I den konkurrensutsatta bankmarknaden har det blivit viktigare att utveckla kundrelationerna då det är ett bra sätt att differentiera sig från varandra. Avsikten med studien är att förklara och analysera vilken inverkan demografiska faktorer har på lojalitet. I teorin har det framförts en presentation på relationsmarknadsföring och dennes betydelse i dagens samhälle. Efteråt har vi utifrån tidigare forskning beskrivit oberoende variabler som kundnöjdhet, förtroende, kommunikation, engagemang, kompetens och beroende variabeln kundlojalitet. Därefter har en presentation av demografiska faktorerna kön, ålder, inkomst och kultur framförts. Dessa faktorer har varit basen för utveckling av vår undersökningsmodell. Utifrån teorin har vi uppmärksammat att tidigare forskare har kommit fram till att kommunikation är en viktig variabel för både förtroendet och lojaliteten. Även nöjdheten och engagemang har i deras undersökningar ett signifikant samband med lojaliteten. Studien har använt sig av deduktiv ansats och utifrån en positivistisk synvinkel. Studien har genomförts med hjälp av en kvantitativ undersökning genom enkätfrågor. Dessa frågor har baserats på tidigare forskning och tilldelats 130 studenter på Malmö högskola vid två olika tillfällen. Analysen har framförts genom statistiska tester i SPSS. Inledningsvis analyserades vilken tillförlitlighet studien har och det visade sig att alla faktorer förutom kompetensen hade hög reliabilitet. Därefter kan vi genom korrelationstestet se att förtroende, nöjdhet, engagemang, kommunikation har en positiv korrelation till kundlojalitet. Studiens sista test var regressionsanalys som prövade vilka faktorer som har ett signifikant samband med kundlojaliteten. Det visade sig att alla faktorer förutom kompetens hade ett signifikant samband med kundlojalitet. Faktorerna slogs samman till en gemensam variabel; kundlojalitet. Detta gjordes i syfte att jämföra hur demografiska faktorer påverkar kundlojaliteten hos studenter. Det resultera i att endast kön var den faktor som hade en signifikant skillnad vilket innebär att den påverkar kundlojalitet. Kultur, ålder och inkomst hade ingen signifikant skillnad. Vi kunde även utläsa att skillnaderna i medelvärde var för små mellan de olika grupperna mot variabeln kundlojalitet / In the highly competitive banking market, it has become more important to develop customer relationships where it is a good way to differentiate themselves from each other. The purpose of the study is to explain and analyze the impact demographic factors have on loyalty. In theory there has been a presentation on relationship marketing and its importance in today's society. Afterwards we have based on previous research described independent variables as customer satisfaction, trust, communication, commitment, competence and dependent variable customer loyalty. Since then, a presentation of demographic factors gender, age, income, and culture have been made. These factors have been the basis for the development of our research model. In theory, we have drawn attention to the fact that previous researchers have come to the conclusion that communication is an important variable for both trust and loyalty. Also satisfaction and commitment in their studies have a significant relationship with the loyalty. The study has used the deductive approach and based on a positive point of view. The study has been carried out with the help of a quantitative study by survey. These questions have been based on previous research and assigned to 130 students at the Malmo University at two different times. The analysis has been made by means of statistical tests in SPSS. Initially the study has analyzed the reliability and it appeared that all of the factors except competence had high reliability. Then we can see that by correlation test trust, satisfaction, commitment, communication has a positive correlation to customer loyalty. The last test was regression analysis which tested the factors which have a significant relationship with customer loyalty. It was found that all the factors except competence had a significant relationship with customer loyalty. Factors were combined into a single variable; customer loyalty. This was done in order to compare how demographic factors affect customer loyalty among students. The result was that gender was the only factor that had a significant difference which means that it affects customer loyalty. Culture, age and income had no significant difference. because difference in average was too low to detect an impact on customer loyalty. We could also show that the differences in the mean were small between the different groups with the variable customer loyalty.

Customer retention, loyalty and satisfaction are extremely important elements in any company’s strategy, especially in the highly competitive South African banking industry. Understanding the various factors that could influence these constructs is therefore critical to organizational success. Several studies showed the impact of these measures on profitability and shareholder value, but there has been little effort to access the factors that might lead to higher levels of retention, loyalty and satisfaction, especially in the banking industry. This paper examines the antecedents of customer retention, satisfaction and loyalty. These possible factors include: perceived value, perceived corporate image, perceived competitive advantage, perceived switching barriers, communication, knowledgeable employees, empowerment, personalisation, ethical behaviour, fees, relationship marketing, service quality (core and relational) as well as enabling service features. The results indicated that customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, switching barriers and communication had a significant impact on customer retention; customer loyalty, perceived value, perceived corporate image, retention, empowerment and relationship marketing had a significant impact on customer satisfaction; and customer satisfaction, switching barriers, perceived value, customer retention, fees, competitive advantage and relationship marketing had a significant impact on customer loyalty. It is evident that there is a close relation between satisfaction, retention and loyalty as all three influence each other in some way or another. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

Customer retention, loyalty and satisfaction are extremely important elements in any company’s strategy, especially in the highly competitive South African banking industry. Understanding the various factors that could influence these constructs is therefore critical to organizational success. Several studies showed the impact of these measures on profitability and shareholder value, but there has been little effort to access the factors that might lead to higher levels of retention, loyalty and satisfaction, especially in the banking industry. This paper examines the antecedents of customer retention, satisfaction and loyalty. These possible factors include: perceived value, perceived corporate image, perceived competitive advantage, perceived switching barriers, communication, knowledgeable employees, empowerment, personalisation, ethical behaviour, fees, relationship marketing, service quality (core and relational) as well as enabling service features. The results indicated that customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, switching barriers and communication had a significant impact on customer retention; customer loyalty, perceived value, perceived corporate image, retention, empowerment and relationship marketing had a significant impact on customer satisfaction; and customer satisfaction, switching barriers, perceived value, customer retention, fees, competitive advantage and relationship marketing had a significant impact on customer loyalty. It is evident that there is a close relation between satisfaction, retention and loyalty as all three influence each other in some way or another. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

The aim of this thesis is to develop a greater understanding of consumers' brand repertoires. This research is part of the brand choice literature, which involves the analysis of all parts of the brand choice process. While there is clearly a need for research on the size of consumers' repertoites, little research has been conducted on this topic to date. This thesis provides much needed descriptive knowledge in relation to repertoire size, as well as providing information about the potential influence of a selection of consumer characteristics on this measure. / Repertoire size is defined as the number of brands a consumer purchases over a specified period of time. It is not only seen as a measure of loyalty (the smaller the repertoire, the higher the loyalty), but also a measure of competitiveness in a market (the bigger the repertoire, the greater the competition). Although these areas are of considerable interest to marketing managers and researchers alike, this measure has rarely been emphasised in previous research (Colombo and Jiang 2002). / Thesis (BA(Hons)IndustrialandAppliedMaths)--University of South Australia, 2008.

The growth of the Internet has imposed a fundamental shift in business economics and is particularly true for the banking industry. Banks have been adopting more Internet banking services in order to remain competitive in the banking industry. Drivers of growth in Internet banking are a combination of convenience provided to those with easy Internet access, the availability of secure and high standard Internet banking functionality and the necessity of banking services to be efficient (ACNielsen, May 2002). / The convenience of banking via the Internet is allowing the growth of multiple banking relationships as customers learn to shop around and utilize one bank's specialized services while maintaining an everyday account with another bank. Denton and Chan (1991) defined this kind of multiple banking as being conducted where people employ two or more bankers to handle their personal financial affairs. Gerrard and Cunningham (1999) indicated that socio-economic characteristics can be used to identify a multiple bank user(s) from a single bank user. / According to Dick and Basu (1994), switching costs are a common strategy to maintain the loyalty. Switching costs have been identified as a factor contributing to maintaining a relationship (Morgan and Hunt, 1994). / While a large amount of literature has examined the issues of consumers' multiple bank behaviour in traditional non-Internet setting (Burnett and Chonko, 1981; and Chan, Ghee and Ho, 1993), few consumer behaviour studies have extended beyond traditional non-Internet settings into the context of Internet commerce. This research would be among the earliest attempt to study this issue in an Internet setting. / Based on a review of the literature, a research model linking customer satisfaction, loyalty, switching costs and split Internet bank behaviour was developed. The model has two main features. First, it examines the main direct effects of customer satisfaction, loyalty and switching costs on split Internet bank behaviour. Second, the model also examines the moderating role of socio-economic characteristics (income, education and positions) on the relationship between customer satisfaction, loyalty and switching costs - split Internet bank behaviour. / The empirical research was based on data collected by an Internet survey of adopters of Internet banking service in Hong Kong. Results from the statistical analyses indicate that customer satisfaction, loyalty as well as switching costs have a strong positive effect on split Internet bank behaviour. These analyses also examine the moderating role of socio-economic characteristics on the relationship between customer satisfaction, loyalty, switching costs and split Internet bank behaviour. / Implications for researchers and the banking industry are discussed which include factors that affect split Internet bank behaviour; socio-economic characteristics that could be used to distinguish a split Internet bank customer from a single bank customer; effective strategies to user retention and multiple banking relationships reduction. / Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2007.

This thesis is about how insights from double jeopardy can validly be applied to market dynamics. It has been stated that when a brand increases its market share it will tend to move up some conceptual double jeopardy (DJ) line, with its penetration increasing comparatively more than its purchase frequency for a given market share change. There remains a gap in this approach to dynamics that is academically and managerially relevant. The growth of a particular brand immediately implies a change in the market of some sort and that means the double jeopardy line is likely to move. Rather than riding up a static double jeopardy curve a growing brand could be thought of as taking up a position on a new curve. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2007.