Customer loyalty in services is the focus of the research. The research problem sought to determine both indirect and indirect effects of relational outcomes on customer loyalty, conceptualised as a psychological state. Relational outcomes are defined as: the thoughts, feelings, and relationships perceived by customers arising from the interaction with a service employee. This class of variable is differentiated from other relational factors such as the characteristics of the actors in the interaction and their behaviours. The effects of relational outcome antecedents were compared to service evaluation antecedents such as customer satisfaction, quality, and value. Customer loyalty was modelled as a psychological state and grounded in the unique characteristics of services. The pioneering work of Kingstrom (1983) was used as a basis for extending the literature. Customer loyalty is an important variable for both services marketing researchers and industry. Accordingly, the research was justified on both theoretical and managerial grounds. Four factors inspired the identification of the research gap: a lack of service loyalty research grounded in service characteristics, lack of studies that conceptualised loyalty as a psychological state, inadequacy of service evaluation measures to predict customer loyalty, and the perceived importance of social interaction to service outcomes. Data collection included pilot studies, re-analysis of published literature, and three major studies. In the first major study, 23 informants provided insights into the nature of three specific relational outcomes: friendship, social comfort, and social regard. The second study was a cross-sectional survey of 190 hair-dressing customers. The specific relationships between friendship, social regard, social comfort, value for money, service encounter satisfaction, perceived core service quality, and customer loyalty were established in this study. New scales were also developed for friendship, social regard, social comfort, and customer loyalty. A third study collected survey data from 406 customers of hairdressing salons, cafes, and naturopathic clinics. Hypothesised relationships were tested through three nested structural equation models. The results indicate that relational outcomes in general are important to customer loyalty. Their effects on loyalty as a psychological state are both direct and indirect. The strength of the effects of relational outcomes on loyalty compares favourably with the effects of service evaluation measures on loyalty. The construct of friendship between individual customer and service employee was found to be related significantly and positively with customer loyalty. The effect of personal friendship appears to have as strong an effect as perceptions of core quality and service encounter satisfaction. Another major finding was that the two relational outcomes of social comfort and social regard both had an indirect influence on customer loyalty. This effect was mediated through the service evaluation constructs of perceived core service quality and service encounter satisfaction. Social comfort affected both quality and satisfaction whereas social regard only influenced quality. However, the impact of social regard on core quality was substantial. Friendship was not found to have a significant relationship with either quality or satisfaction. These findings suggest that there is a temporal dimension to the influence of relational outcomes. Both social regard and social comfort appear to be more important in the early stages of customer-service provider interaction. It also appears that customers evaluate the core quality of everyday services such as hair salons, cafes, and naturopaths using social cues such as feeling well regarded. A further major finding was the lack of a significant relationship between value for money and psychological loyalty in both quantitative studies. Effects of quality, satisfaction, and friendship appear to be important to loyalty development whereas customer value is not. This finding suggests that value for money may be related directly to actual purchase behaviour or repurchase intentions rather than mediated through psychological feelings of loyalty. Hence, evaluations which reflect pricing considerations are less likely to be associated with psychological loyalty than more relationally oriented constructs. The findings indicate important implications for both marketers and researchers. Marketing strategists need to be clear about pursuing either a loyalty or a value for money strategy. The former may not result from the latter. Relational outcomes lead to psychological loyalty but their interactive effects operate differently. Friendship with a service employee provides a direct contribution to loyalty development. Whereas social regard and social comfort affect customers' evaluation of the service. Pursuing a relational strategy will have implications for the way frontline staff are selected and trained. Theoretical implications include: using the relational outcomes as a basis for middle range theory development, support for the linear-additive measurement approach, use of laddering techniques to determine relevant influencing variables, and additional explanatory power to the service recovery literature. In conclusion, a unidimensional construct of psychological loyalty, grounded in service characteristics, was developed, tested, and evaluated for wide application to service industries. Three specific relational antecedents: Friendship, social regard, and social comfort were found to be important to the development of customer loyalty. The research highlighted how these relational outcomes interacted with service evaluation measures to produce loyal customers. Accordingly, Kingstrom's (1983) work has been extended.

Consumer trust research has principally developed from established psychological-based research. This conception of consumer trust largely draws from research pertaining to interpersonal trust. This study combined existing theories from both sociological and psychological research in developing a consumer trust model specifically for banks. Partly because of their historical position in society and also because of their government-protected position, banks, bank branches and bank managers have traditionally held a respected, and trusted position in Australian communities. Because of this reputation and position in communities, banks were seen to display institutional attributes. These attributes were defined in this study as local community focus, local availability and visibility, relationship power symmetry and social obligation fulfilment. This study explored the notion of institution-based trust in an Australian retail banking context. Institution-based trust was a measure of the levels of consumer trust in various defined institutional attributes. It was contended that through the diminishment and divestment of its institutional attributes banks were impairing their institutional cachet. The process was termed 'deinstitutionalisation' and was postulated to have a negative impact on consumer trust. The hypothetico-deductive methodological framework was employed throughout the study, with a mail-based consumer survey used as the main means of primary data collection. 468 useable questionnaires from adult bank customers were yielded and the data analysed. These data were analysed and used to test twenty-three research hypotheses of which nineteen were supported. From the results, it was concluded that perceived local community focus, perceived social obligation fulfilment and perceived relationship power symmetry were antecedents to consumer trust in banks. Also, reasonable availability of conventional bank branch services was found to be an important component of perceived community focus of their banks, thus having an indirect relationship to institution-based consumer trust in banks. Community Banks were found to be exhibiting and promoting many of these institutional attributes. Consumers were found to be less likely to need bank branches for transactional or functional purposes, but branches were seen to be symbolically important. Also, consumers were found to be more likely to identify with intangible elements of their bank, principally bank brand, than with tangible attributes such as the bank branch. Importantly, consumers were found to be trusting of their banks, however they were more likely to believe that banks were less trustworthy now than they were in the past.

Background: Statistics say that Pakistan is the third largest user of compressed natural gas, its increased demand has encouraged investment in this sector. Number of stations has doubled in less than four years, this has increased the ratio of competition and low amounts of profit. Cut throat competition forces retailers to work on quality for customers’ retention and for this retailers are expected to understand the needs and requirements of their customers. This understanding is the only key to customer retention. Research undertaken focus on the key issues faced by CNG stations for customers’ retention. The study will focus on retailer’s strategies for customer retention in a competitive environment. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is study customer retention strategies adopted by compressed natural gas (CNG) retailing stations, in a developing country (Pakistan). Research Question: How do CNG retailing stations satisfy, make loyal, and retain their customers in a competitive environment? Methodology: Deductive approach has been adopted for this research to investigate the behaviour of customers through telephone interviews, as it is a distant research. Convenience sample has been selected for this research and ten semi-structured telephonic interviews have been conducted to get the empirical data from the CNG retailers of Lahore, stations from ten different stations have been selected on the basis of prestige, repute and amount of publicity in print and electronic media. Semi structured interviews will be based on primary and secondary data together. Primary data is in the form of interviews, secondary in the form of reports and published journals. Telephonic interview was based on open-ended questions to judge the views, knowledge and utility of customers experience and close-ended questions that have provided the direct and accurate answers. Telephonic interviews have advantages and disadvantages but for a distant research like this, it is the only best possible methodology to get first-hand knowledge quickly, interview was based on ten questions to get a complete picture of customers’ retention. Operationalization was based on 14 questions question 1 to 6 are about customers’ satisfaction, 7 to 11 customer loyalty and 12 to 14 customer retention. Validity and reliability is the key to success for any research. Same question were asked in different ways to check the reliability of the answers, target oriented questions were asked to validate the objective of the research and to make research credible. Conclusion and Results: The research establishes that most companies do not have specific plans for the customer retention in a cut-throat competitive environment. Customers’ service and technical issues were the targeted areas to understand the customers’ retention. Customers’ retention means profit, low retention means low profits. Result in a nutshell is an increased focus on imperial investigation, which is inevitable to study strategies for customer retention for the survival in the competitive world.

This bachelor thesis studies the impact of social networking on customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is defined as a commitment to re-buy a specific product or service in the future, despite external influences. There are several influencers of customer loyalty that must be taken care of, e.g. core offering, demographics, elasticity level or share of wallet. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the factors that influence customer loyalty through social networking on Facebook. In order to achieve that, the author has reviewed academic literature on the topic of customer loyalty, as well as on social networking and the ways in which Facebook is used as a marketing tool.

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Abstract The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between customers and the telecommunication service provider regarding customer support service. The authors focus on customers support service as a tool of enhancing relationship between customers and telecommunication service provider and to come up with a “best practice” for the customer-support service in the telecom industry. The research has been conducted with recent relevant literature from academic viewpoint such as the relationship marketing, customer loyalty, customer dominant logic, customer support service and triggering factors for switching. After reviewing all of literatures authors have adequate knowledge how to enhance and sustain long term relationship with customers. Nearly every literature stipulates from customers perspective business operations for long term relationship. To accomplish research aim, authors conducted with an explorative research approach and with the help of a designed descriptive questionnaire which consist of seventeen close-ended and open-ended questions. The target group was sixteen master level students of Karlstad University who belong to nine different countries. From the interview, authors try to explore respondents’ experiences and acceptation from customer support service. Authors reached at the conclusion on the basis of collected qualitative information that the effective customer support service plays a vital role for enhancing the relationship between customers and telecom service providers. It is also evident throughout the research that the customer support service is the key link between the customer and the telecommunication service provider. / TeliaSonera

The Internet as a new media has two distinct and powerful advantages: interactivity and data collection. The emergence of Web2.0 has taken advantage of these characteristics to provide a powerful platform for sharing opinions and communication in virtual communities. However, successfully managing a virtual community is the same as managing a company. The most important thing is to maintain a good relationship with its customers and retain loyal customers. Much previous research has reported that maintaining a good relationship with customers can produce long-term benefits to the organization. The purpose of this research was to investigate whether customer relationship and loyalty can be affected by the perceived interactivity of a website. We developed a research model and conducted an online survey on eight representative websites to collect data. The results show that there is no direct positive influence between the interactivity of a website and customer loyalty. However, significant indirect relationships exist. That is, the perceived interactivity of a website can affect the relationship quality, which will in turn affects customer loyalty. Relationship quality has a mediating effect between website interactivity and customer loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the consumers at Republic of China Marine Corps School Military 534 Camp Station and the relationship between their service quality, customer satisfaction, and loyalty, using the questionnaire survey method. 484 valid samples were retrieved, which then undergo SPSS statistical software analysis for descriptive statistical analysis and regression analysis. The analytical results showed that the various dimensions of service quality have positive correlations to the various dimensions of customer satisfaction, with significant effects. The dimensions of service quality are also positively correlated to the dimensions of loyalty, with significant effects. The dimensions of customer satisfaction are positively correlated to the dimensions of loyalty, with significant effects.

Abstract To be outstanding in the gas-station industry in today¡¦s intensive and competitive environments, the company needs to be devoted in managing customer relationship. As consumers are aware of and fighting for their rights in recent years, the competition in gas station is getting sever. The purpose of this study is to survey with stratified random sampling to understand the consumer behaviors among Chinese Petroleum Corporation (CPC) franchised gas stations, CPC owned gas stations and Formosa gas stations. Increasing customer satisfaction can build up customer loyalty, and enhance future interaction. So knowing the consumer behavior among the different types of gas stations can help understand how consumers choose a gas stations and how they rate the service quality. The investigation outcome of this study was derived form Factor Analysis, T-test, Cluster, ANOVA, Scheffe¡¦s statistical methods, and had carried out structural analysis in the service quality model to find out the key factors of customer satisfaction. The findings should help to improve management efficiency and competitiveness in the industry. Keyword¡Ggas stations, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty

In attempt to build to a high technological and digital communication Taiwan,the country government plan to build up the broadband network to six million subscribers in its challenging the country developed 6 years program in 2008. The construction of broadband network will be the main stream of market. Chunghwa Telecom¡¦s ADSL program is satisfied with the requirement of society. The object of this research is based on the ADSL customers at the broad Kaohsiung Area of Chunghwa Telecom. The investigation area encompassKaohsiung city, Fongsun, Kungsun, Chiesun of Kaohsiung County. The investigation adopts the method of questionnaire. Data are collected via Stratified Random Sampling, and analyzed by SPSS statistic software. It is also implemented by using seven factors that affect customer satisfaction like service contents, prices, convenience, enterprise images, service facilities, service staffs and service process in connection with service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty. The result of this investigation occurs as below: There is a remarkable different between customer¡¦s satisfaction and values in response to the practical aspect of quality. Different customers respond with market different from sex, age, and choosing a place to use Internet are varied in satisfaction. The group of customer responds satisfaction from different person requires Internet service. It exist conspicuous difference in the choice. The obvious mutuality between the practical aspect of service quality and customer¡¦s satisfaction has positive effects. The practical aspect of service quality in different place of using Internet, the item of service quality, and customer satisfaction are clearly differ from each others. Different customers respond with market different from sex, marriage, and age to use Internet are varied in loyalty. The group of customer who requires different personal Internet service is remarkable difference from loyalty in the choice. The obvious mutuality between the practical aspect of service quality and customer¡¦s loyalty has positive effects. The practical aspect of service quality in different place of using Internet, the item of service quality, and customer loyalty are clearly differ from each others. According to the above-mentioned result of research, it brings up suggestions depending on service contents, prices, convenience, enterprise images, service facilities, service staffs, and service process