Consumer loyalty programs are a key marketing strategy implemented across multiple industries in the United States. A successfully implemented loyalty program can benefit both the consumer and the company. The purpose of this single case study was to explore strategies that grocery store managers use to successfully deliver consumer loyalty programs. The theory of planned behavior was used as the conceptual framework to guide the study. Semistructured interviews, guided by the theory of planned behavior, were conducted with 4 participants who had direct involvement with the delivery of the consumer loyalty program, in Ocala, Florida. Data were also gathered from loyalty program documents and from reviewing the grocery store chain website. Data were transcribed and coded via Yin's 5 phases of analysis to identify themes. Mobile technology, consumer involvement, and lack of social media applications were the prominent themes that emerged during data analysis. The study findings are of interest to grocery store managers because they provide information for use in increasing store revenue, consumer satisfaction, and cost savings for grocery store chains implementing successful loyalty reward programs. Implications for positive social change include positive community initiatives and cause-related marketing campaigns.

The foremost argument of this research is that self concept is of fundamental influence in the choices consumers make when purchasing luxury clothing brands. The objective of this research was to determine the relationships between self concept and the experience, attachment and loyalty that consumers have towards brands. The research further sought to confirm the role that identity theory plays in brand consumption. Sixty-nine respondents were surveyed via an electronic tool to understand how they view the role that self concept plays in the experiences they encounter with clothing brands. Experts were also interviewed to gain deeper insights into brands and the importance that communication and branding strategies play in developing brands for consumption. Ttests and bivariate regression was performed in order to determine relationships amongst the constructs. The findings show that consumers place a relatively high importance on the brand experience and self concept constructs. Marketing and advertising companies have an enormous responsibility to ensure that the right messages are communicated to consumers in order to give consumer a positive brand experience. A robust brand strategy and Communications strategy plays a pivotal role in successful delivery of the essence and image of luxury brands. Identity and self concept theory are central to understanding consumer behaviour and consumption decisions. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This research investigated how the effectiveness of gamification can increase customer retention. Obtaining and maintaining customer retention is a critical challenge for all customer-dependent markets within any industry. The study investigated the current effectiveness of the leading grocery chain in Sweden, ICA, and its loyalty program “Stammis”. This will be analyzed through the lens of the octalysis framework, a popular theoretical framework for gamification in non-game industries. While the utilization of the octalysis framework in investigating customer retention has been done prior to this study, a gap within the grocery industry has been detected. To archive the goal of the study, an thematic analysis was conducted, analyzing the current effectiveness of the Stammis program in correlation to the octalysis framework toward customer retention. Design iterations were created based on the result of the thematic analysis, suggesting potential redesigns with the goal of increasing the usage of gamification. The key findings of this research suggested that Stammis had an overall low inclusion of gamified elements. Furthermore, the outcome of this research demonstrated that mild design modifications of the existing features could increase the overall customer engagement of the application in accordance with the octalysis framework.

Corporate social responsibility is a broad business model, that encourages companies to be transparent concerning their environmental, ethical, philanthropic and economical aims. The purpose of this thesis is to explain if efforts within these areas could eventually lead to customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is often achieved when a company builds and maintains a positive long-term relationship with a consumer. In order to conduct research on the subject, a quantitative method was used in order to gather data. Since this research is built upon existing research, it is explanatory and uses a cross-sectional research design. This led to the testing of four hypotheses and a construction of a questionnaire, that was sent out to the public by posting it on social medias. In connection to this, ethical and societal issues were taken into consideration when the questionnaire was written. The data collected was compiled in IBM SPSS Statistics and structured in the results chapter. The findings of the data indicate that the proposed model of the four hypotheses was rejected due to insignificance. Therefore, the authors concluded that CSR does not have an effect on customer loyalty, in contradiction to what previous research has stated on the relationship.

Författare: Max Lundmark Handledare: Bo Carlsson, Gun Normark. Nyckelord: Loyalty/rewards programs, reinforcement, consumer behavior. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur amerikanska universitet använder lojalitetsprogram. Detta görs genom att studera universitetens syfte med att använda lojalitetsprogram, och hur det påverkar vilka strategier de använder för att uppmuntra ett visst beteende i samband med sportevenemang. Metod: Studien tillämpar en kvalitativ forskningsmetod. Representanter från fyra amerikanska universitet intervjuades i samband med studien. Analysen utfördes utifrån teorin grounded theory. Teori: Studiens teoretiska ramverk utgår ifrån begrepp från psykologi- och marknadsföringsforskning. Empirisk presentation: Presenterar datainsamlingen. Resultat och slutsats: Studiens resultat indikerade att ett universitets syfte med att använda ett lojalitetsprogram starkt påverkar vilka belöningsstrategier som används. Däremot så tenderade skolorna i studien att uppmuntra liknande beteende och använda samma typ av belöningar inom deras program. Detta berodde universitetens liknande karaktärsdrag. Studien utvecklade också förståelsen kring varför ett amerikanskt universitet använder sig utav lojalitetsprogram. Resultatet visade att fördelarna av att använda ett program kunde bidrog till att locka nya studenter, vilket är fundamentalt för ett universitet. Slutligen så går det att argumnetera för att studien också bidorg med ökad kunskap inom det vetenskapliga undersökningsområdet genom att identifiera vissa svårigheter med att relatera empirin till etablerade teorier. / Author: Max Lundmark Handlers: Bo Carlsson, Gun Normark. Keywords/main concepts: Loyalty/rewards programs, reinforcement, consumer behavior. Purpose: The study aimed to examine how American universities use sports loyalty programs. This will be done by studying the purpose of why schools use a program, and how this affects what rewards strategies they apply to reinforce a certain student behavior at their sports events. Methodology: The study is based on a qualitative research method. Interviews were conducted with representatives at four American universities. Analysis was done using grounded theory. Theoretical framework: The study’s theoretical framework is based on concepts from psychology and marketing research. Empirical presentation: Presents data from the conducted interviews. Results and conclusion: The findings indicated that a university’s purpose of running a program strongly affects what rewards strategies they use. However, the schools included in this study tended to promote similar kind of behavior and use the same types of rewards. This was explained by their similar characteristics. The study also added knowledge to why an American university use a loyalty program. Findings showed that the benefits of using a program was strongly related to attracting new students, which is fundamental for any university. Lastly, the study also contributed to research on loyalty programs by identifying certain issues with connecting findings to established theories.

Strategic alliances have become a recognized strategy used by firms in the pursuit of their diverse organizational objectives. Consequently, the literature on alliances is replete with research investigating the value strategic alliances generate for participating organizations. Strategic alliances have been shown to contribute to firm value through numerous sources, including scale economies, effective risk management, cost efficient market entries, and learning from partners. Largely overlooked in the literature however, are issues investigating the relationship between strategic alliances and one of the organization's most important constituents, the consumer. Questions such as how the consumer reacts to inter-firm alliances, how strategic alliances impact consumer value, satisfaction, and customer post-purchase behavior have yet to be answered. This lacuna has been recently highlighted by prominent researchers in the discipline (Rindfleisch and Moorman 2003). Focusing on marketing alliances, the present dissertation attempts to address this gap in the alliance literature by advancing and testing a theoretical framework examining consumers' cognitive, affective, and behavioral reactions to organizational strategic alliances. The dissertation also contributes to the satisfaction literature. Scholars in this area have traditionally viewed satisfaction as a cognitive response to the comparison of actual consumption experiences with some comparison standard (confirmation/disconfirmation paradigm). Recently however, there have been increasing calls for satisfaction measures to capture not just how the customer thinks the product performed relative to the comparison standard, but also the resulting customer emotion. The study provides additional support of an affective route to customer satisfaction, particularly when customer hedonic value is enhanced. Moreover, the association between customer satisfaction and behavioral outcomes is also examined. While prior research shows that satisfaction is positively related to loyalty and word of mouth and negatively related to intentions to switch, it was found that these relationships are even stronger in the presence of alliances. The results of this dissertation provide important theoretical and managerial insights. The strategic alliance literature is enhanced insofar as this is the first effort aimed at investigating the impact of strategic alliances on the consumer. The study examines the relationship between marketing alliances and customer value, particularly utilitarian and hedonic value, as well as the moderating role of alliance type (functional or symbolic) in this relationship. From a managerial perspective, engaging in strategic alliances is strategically critical and costly. By providing insight into how alliances enhance consumer value, and how in turn value enhancement is related to customer satisfaction and behavioral outcomes, the present research will help managers make more appropriate and better-informed alliance decisions.

This dissertation consists of two essays that study the relevant boundary conditions to the relationship between the customer satisfaction and loyalty. Retaining current customers is critical to a firm's performance and has been well-established in the literature. Extant literature tells us that loyal customers are typically less price sensitive, spend more than non-loyal customers, less expensive to retain, and more importantly, provide new referrals through positive word of mouth. In the first essay, drawing from decision justifiability theory, I posit that consideration set size and price-consciousness moderate the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty. At higher levels of consideration set sizes, the positive relationship between satisfaction and loyalty is likely to be weakened. However, this two-way interaction effect is seen to impact high and low price-conscious consumers differently. Specifically, I show that satisfied, low price-conscious consumers with higher consideration set sizes will be more loyal vis-a-vis high price-conscious consumers with similar satisfaction levels and set sizes. These theoretical hypotheses are tested in four separate studies. Specifically, I use secondary data and three experimental studies. All my hypotheses including the mediating role of decision justifiability are supported. The second essay investigates the role of satisfaction on loyalty intentions for firms that offer both the product and the product-related augmented services. In the industry that I studied for this question, buying a product requires an extraordinarily high capital outlay; however, the profitability of the firm is dependent on the services offered to the customers. The services market is a very competitive market as well in this industry. So, how should a firm manage this portfolio that includes both products and services? I draw and extend the consumption system model proposed by Mittal, Kumar and Tsiros (Journal of Marketing, 1999). Specifically, I propose a curvilinear relationship for both product and services satisfaction on loyalty intentions and posit synergistic interactions between them. I test this model using longitudinal data spanning five years across multiple countries that were obtained from a multinational company. Analyses reveal support for the proposed hypotheses.

Vertical brand extensions have been used as popular strategies in the lodging industry. Research on brand extension that is related with brand trust and brand loyalty has been useful in making brand extensions successful. However, previous research focused on aggregated relationships among brand trust, brand loyalty, and brand extension. In addition, it has been found that quality and price distance from a core brand of the brand extension has an impact on the success of the brand extension. Therefore, this dissertation proposes a theoretical model with six hypotheses investigating relationships among brand trust, brand loyalty and brand extension simultaneously. Further, the impact of distance from a core brand (brand distance) on the brand extension was examined. Data was collected using an online panel. A final sample of 396 was used for the data analysis. Structural equation modeling (SEM), a Chi-square difference test, and independent t-tests were utilized to test the hypotheses. The data was randomly split in two. One half of the dataset was used to test a measurement model and the other half of the dataset was used to test a structural equation model. The findings suggested there were positive relationships between brand trust and brand loyalty, brand trust and brand extension, and brand loyalty and brand extension. Furthermore, it was found that brand distance plays a significant role not only on brand extension, but also on the relationship between brand trust and brand extension and the relationship between brand loyalty and brand extension. This study contributes to vertical brand extension literature by providing a theoretical model by which simultaneous relationships among brand trust, brand loyalty and brand extension were investigated with a moderating factor: brand distance. The findings of this dissertation have important managerial implications for lodging industry brand managers. / Ph. D.

M. Tech. (Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management Sciences), Vaal University of Technology. / Research on price, packaging and loyalty has been well documented internationally and in South Africa. Many companies have recognised that the designs of packaging and different price strategies have an effect on brand loyalty. The study examined customer perceptions of packaging and price on loyalty. A case study was used in the study. A literature study on packaging, price and loyalty was undertaken to unpack the drivers behind consumer loyalty and what makes consumers loyal to a brand. The empirical study involved assessing the relationships between visual packaging, physical packaging, price, and brand awareness on brand loyalty through a self administered questionnaire. The sample comprised 212 respondents situated in the North-West of Johannesburg. The data obtained indicated strong relationships among physical packaging, visual packaging, price and brand awareness with reference to brand loyalty. Correlation and regression analysis revealed that brand loyalty is influenced by the packaging appeal, price and brand awareness. Based on the findings, recommendations were made to assist the company in various areas of their marketing strategy in order to enhance brand loyalty: Graphics and labelling on packaging are essential aspects of brand identification in order for consumers to easily recognise a brand. The introduction of lifestyle graphics may give the company a competitive edge as this may appeal to consumers. The regression analysis indicated that consumers tend to be attracted to a brand with the aid of packaging which will allow them to carry and preserve the product. The study also revealed that consumers are not highly price sensitive i.e. consumers are not likely to buy a competitor's products due to lower prices. The results infer that, for a company to have a strong brand, the following aspects of marketing strategies need to be assessed and implemented correctly, namely brand awareness, price and packaging which may lead to brand loyalty.

Abstract  Purpose - Purpose of given study is to analyse the impact of service recovery measures on customer loyalty by considering a Case company Swedbank. Both primary and secondary data have been collected for this paper. In primary data interviews and questionnaires are used. Different theories about customer loyalty and service recovery are discussed in secondary data. Both qualitative and quantitative data are used. Multiple regression analysis is used to analyse the data and give conclusion. Conclusion - Conclusion shows that service recovery measure can impact customer loyalty. It is also concluded that prompt response, Material compensation and politeness of employees play important role in service recovery measures and influence customer loyalty. Methodology - New articles have been used in the paper, however the old articles that have high contribution in the body of knowledge are not be discounted also. Our methodology for the process is unique in which multiple regression method is used and components of Customer loyalty, word of mouth and repurchase intention are analysed on basis of independent variables. Methodology and literature can help the researchers who want to further explore this area. Practical implication - Theories discussed in the thesis can be used as basis to develop the strategies in services; these strategies can consider the service recovery measures discussed in this paper and it can also help Swedbank to know the importance of service recovery process in customer loyalty.  Limitation - Few limitations of this paper are; customer loyalty is the objective of this paper, not Customer satisfaction. Service recovery may result in customer satisfaction not in customer loyalty. Moreover only two components of loyalty have been examined, word of mouth and repurchase intention. The attitudinal component of customer loyalty can appear in more forms than only word of mouth. Moreover this thesis is not considering customers who have problems but they did not communicate to the bank, or they just exit or they are still with bank and having negative word of mouth, but they never communicate to the bank.