"July 2003" / Bibliography: p. 161-170. / 170, [28] p. : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Builds a model of performance based on customer defined market orientation and which includes customer service (customer process) and customer retention (business performance). Examines the nature of market orientation and its impact on customer satisfaction and customer retention in the service sector. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Commerce, 2003

<p>The two swedish unions, Akademikerförbundet SSR and Kommunal, have a majority of female participations who mainly work in the public services. The difference between the unions is that one of them only represents members with academic educations and the other has members with lower educations. The aim of this study was to compare the two unions according to the terms exit, voice and loyalty, but also participation and influence. There were 142 participants in this study and 8 participants were interviewed in a pre-study. The result of the study shows that voice is a strong predictor to wellbeing in work life. Influence has the same effect in wellbeing and it is clear that individuals with academic education has a higher degree of influence in the workplace. Although there was a tendency for participants with higher education to have a lower degree of wellbeing. Exit was found to have negative correlation with wellbeing.</p>

<p><strong>Title</strong>: Satisfaction and loyalty from a customer viewpoint <strong>Level</strong>: Final assignment for Master degree in Business Administration <strong>Authors</strong>: Thomas Blomqvist and Per Nilsson <strong>Supervisor</strong>: Lars-Torsten Eriksson <strong>Date</strong>: Januari 2010</p><p><strong>Purpose: </strong>The overall purpose of our paper is to describe Alfas customers based on the level of satisfaction and loyalty. We also want to find out if there are specific characteristics of customers with a high degree of satisfaction and loyalty.</p><p><strong>Method</strong><strong>: </strong>We have used both secondary and primary data in the paper. We started with a review of relevant literature to seek knowledge in the field of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Thereafter we conducted a prestudy by interviewing three of Alfas employees, and finally we conducted a quantitative survey on Alfas customers. The results were analyzed and compared against current theory of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty</p><p><strong>Results & conclusion</strong><strong>: </strong>The results suggest that Alfa is successful in meeting customer expectations in service delivery, even if we can confirm differences in outcome between the three businessareas. The highest customer perceived quality are found in the three areas that are most important to customers. But we can also identify areas of improvement when it comes to documentation of assignments, well defined quotations and giving information in the case of unforeseen events. Those of Alfas customers that are very satisfied tend to be far more loyal than other customers. Those of Alfas customers that are very satisfied and very loyal (Apostles) have a much more positive perception of the company's service quality and also a significantly higher share-of-wallet than other customers.</p><p><strong>Proposal for further research: </strong>It would be interesting to analyze correlations between profitability and a high degree of customer satisfaction and/or loyalty. Another area for further research could be using a qualitative approach to study the similarities and differences between the three business areas approach to customers and analyze that against the customers perceived servicequality.</p><p><strong>The contribution of this paper</strong><strong>: </strong>This paper describes satisfaction and loyalty from a customer perspective in a service company. It also shows that the level of customer satisfaction impact loyalty, and that customers who shows a high degree of satisfaction and loyalty differentiates themeself compared to other existing customers when it comes to perceived service quality and share-of-wallet.</p>

<p><strong>Aim: </strong>The aim of this study is to investigate how retailer’s customer loyalty program can influence the channel power and what relationship between retailer with manufacturer can be created when channel power changes.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Method: </strong>A case study was adopted, and a qualitative research and face-to-face interview were used to collect the fundamental data.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Result & Conclusions</strong>: The results exhibit that the customer loyalty program implemented by retailer can increase its channel power (both in basic power and market power) and create a dominant relationship with high channel conflict with its manufacturer. Based on the research of the case company, I found a close relationship with cooperation and trust could be developed based on the customer loyalty program between retailer and manufacturer to create benefit for the both.</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Suggestions for future research: </strong>Only adopted one case and one interview in the research is the main limitation. Additionally, the limited sample size limited the research in some generalizations. It is difficult to use only one case to represent the whole situation of the market. In the further, a larger sample size adopted in research can increases the reliability of researcher’s generalization.</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Contribution of the thesis:</strong> The research discloses how retailer’s customer loyalty program can influence the channel power. The drawbacks of the dominant relationship which caused by channel power rising have been researched. How to develop close relationship and what benefit it can bring to retailer have also been investigated in the end.</p>

<p><strong>Purpose: </strong>The purpose of this essay is to study how the hotel chain Radisson SAS works with prolonged customer relations with their business clients, with other words the clients that have business agreements with them.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This study will contain an inductive approach and qualitative methods. The qualitative research method is in the shape of a deep interview with the sales manager of Radisson SAS and qualitative interviews of chosen business clients to the hotel.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The results of this investigation show that business clients are controlled by what kind of agreements their company has.</p><p>The companies sign agreements with hotels and hotel chains that are able to satisfy big parts of their needs, if not all of them.</p><p>With the help of flexible solutions, a well known brand, and good relations, Radisson SAS has made sure that their business clients have prolonged their agreements.</p><p>They are a global hotel chain near transports, and business clients feel secure with Radisson SAS.</p>

<p>Loyalty card is one of the most commonly used promotional activities in business. Thus far, there are some research has been done on luxury hotel, but very few researches are on budget hotel. So, the purpose of the thesis is finding out the Swedish customers’ attitude and behavior towards budget hotel’s loyalty card; getting to know what factors influence Swedish customers’ response towards the loyalty card and budget hotels.</p><p>In the thesis, the main research problem is “<em>How do Swedish customers respond to the Budget hotel’s Loyalty Card promotional activity in Sweden</em>?” Under the main research problem, four sub questions and four hypotheses are designed. Face-to-face interview is implemented for collecting primary data. Interviewees include business traveling interviewees and leisure traveling interviewees, altogether 23 interviewees are interviewed. Secondary data is from articles and journals. The secondary data includes Purchasing/Decision making, Marketing communication, Sales promotion, Pricing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Relationship marketing, Customer satisfaction and loyalty, Personality and Marketing segmentation. The secondary data and primary data are mixed together for the main research problem’s analysis.</p><p>After the research, the thesis comes out that Swedish loyalty card holders show much awareness/ preference/ satisfaction/ loyalty towards the membership budget hotel. Swedish customers use loyalty card in a constant manner only when the benefit is large and the benefit can be gained fast. For the Swedish customers, the Budget hotel loyalty card’s benefit is important, but the benefit is not big enough to make them feel excited. Simple and clear loyalty card rules are appreciated. Reference groups’ comments, fast internet information, loyalty card rule’s complexity, customers’ previous experiences, original price, psychological quality feeling and perceived price level also affect the loyalty card’s effectiveness. By implementing loyalty card, the membership customers’ satisfaction can be increased. The non-membership customers’ satisfaction isn’t negatively affected. Compared with the Swedish leisure travelers, Swedish business travelers show even stronger and much more stable loyalty towards the membership hotel. Leisure traveler is much benefit oriented. But the business traveler is habit oriented. Psychologically, business travelers think that a budget hotel loyalty card can not provide them as much good feeling as the luxury hotel’s loyalty card does.</p>

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to map out and investigate how the banking sector affects a customer’s willingness to change bank, and what the switching costs are for a customer when making these changes. A case study was performed through qualitative and quantitative questionnaires and interviews. The qualitative part was carried out to create hypotheses. The hypotheses was tested in a quantitative survey to be able to either accepted or rejected these them. When merging the hypotheses with the performed survey the authors came to the conclusion that there are two major switching costs that affect a customer’s willingness to change bank. These two are financial and non-financial costs, the financial cost can appear as good economical conditions provided by the bank and the non-financial cost through the relation between the bank and a customer. Further, the authors have created a tool to be used by a bank in order to achieve a high amount of quality and also in what dimension they have to interact with their customers’ needs in order to keep them loyal and satisfied.</p> / <p>Syftet med denna uppsats var att kartlägga vilka inträdes- och utträdesbarriärer som påverkar kundernas rörlighet på den privata bankmarknaden samt beskriva hur ban-ker kan agera för att erhålla och bibehålla nya kunder.Problemfrågan som lyder: ”Hur kan en bank öka tillflödet och bibehålla bankkunder genom att använda sig av inträdes- och utträdesbarriärer på den privata bankmark-naden?” framkom delvis genom diskussion med fallföretagets VD och delvis utifrån vetenskapliga artiklar. Både genom banker och också konsumentbankbyrån skall det vara relativt enkelt för kunderna att byta bank, dock tenderar bankkunderna till att stanna kvar på sin befintliga bank även då de skulle kunna erhålla bättre villkor och avgifter genom ett byte. Med anledning av detta så framkom det att det existerar bar-riärer på bankmarknaden som hindrar bankbyte för kunderna, med det som bank-grund ansåg vi det intressant att analysera om banken kan påverka dessa för egen vinnig.I teoridelen beskriver vi fyra olika teorier vilka vi använder som verktyg för att be-svara vår problemfråga. Den första teorin innefattar kundens beslutsprocess för att identifiera vilka steg kunden går igenom när beslut skall tas. Genom att göra detta kan vi se att många kunder redan har gått igenom flera av stegen i processen och de väntar på rätt tillfälle. Den andra teorin behandlar kundens bedömning av kvalitet och enligt teorin finns det tre olika dimensionen av kvalitet, dessa är teknisk, funktionell och image. Dessa tre dimensioner använder vi i en modell som vi skapat som slut-sats, modellen skall fungera som ett verktyg för banker för att uppnå nöjda kunder. Den tredje teorin behandlar kundlojalitet, denna teori hänvisar tillbaka till den förra då den illustrerar hur viktigt det är att kundens upplevda kvalitet stämmer överens med den förväntade kvalitén. Den fjärde teorin belyser inträdes- och utträdesbarriä-rer och även utifrån perspektiven finansiell och icke finansiell. Genom att dela in dem efter de perspektiven har det varit möjligt att ta fram två stora barriärer, en från varje perspektiv.Genom tre kvalitativa intervjuer med personer på olika positioner inom det valda fallföretaget samt en enkätundersökning riktad mot bankkunder har den empiriska delen skapats. Den information som intervjuerna genererat har vi använt oss av för att utveckla de hypoteser som illustreras i avsnittet 4.5. Dessa hypoteser prövade vi genom en enkätundersökning riktad mot 80 bankkunder.Vi kom fram till att om en bank vill öka tillflödet av bankkunder bör banken identifi-era de största inträdes- och utträdesbarriärerna. De två största barriärerna som vi identifierat är en finansiell barriär (bra villkor) och den andra var en icke finansiell barriär (relationen till banken). Dessa två stora barriärer är de som påverkar de got-ländska bankkunderna till störst del på marknaden i valet av bank. Ett annat intres-sant resultat var att lojalitet är ett diffust begrepp på bankmarknaden varken banken eller bankkunden kan definiera begreppet samtidigt visar resultatet från enkätunder-sökningen att majoriteten anser sig lojala mot sin bank men att de inte tjänar något på att vara lojal.</p>

<p>Aim of this paper is to describe and analyze why customers come back to the restaurants, what influence their decisions. During the research we formulate 2 hypotheses. Hypotheses 1 – most reasons of the restaurants’ customers retention can be associated with restaurants’ service elements adapted from the 8Ps of Service Marketing Model. Hypotheses 2 - retention and loyalty have unidirectional relation – loyalty means retention of the customer, but retained customer doesn’t mean loyal. The results of empirical research support both hypotheses. Also during the empirical research we have highlighted some interesting results which are visualized in Illustration 5.1, Illustration 5.2 and Illustration 5.3. In research qualitative and quantitative approaches are used. Data collection method is interview. One deep interview was conducted with restaurant manager in order to enhance the quality of results interpretation. The results of the research can be used by marketers especially in restaurant sphere in order to better understand what influence customers’ behavior and why they come back to the service provider. Also restaurants’ managers can use our findings as a tool to increase the retention rates by adjusting relevant restaurants’ service elements within their restaurant.</p>

Loyalty card is one of the most commonly used promotional activities in business. Thus far, there are some research has been done on luxury hotel, but very few researches are on budget hotel. So, the purpose of the thesis is finding out the Swedish customers’ attitude and behavior towards budget hotel’s loyalty card; getting to know what factors influence Swedish customers’ response towards the loyalty card and budget hotels. In the thesis, the main research problem is “How do Swedish customers respond to the Budget hotel’s Loyalty Card promotional activity in Sweden?” Under the main research problem, four sub questions and four hypotheses are designed. Face-to-face interview is implemented for collecting primary data. Interviewees include business traveling interviewees and leisure traveling interviewees, altogether 23 interviewees are interviewed. Secondary data is from articles and journals. The secondary data includes Purchasing/Decision making, Marketing communication, Sales promotion, Pricing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Relationship marketing, Customer satisfaction and loyalty, Personality and Marketing segmentation. The secondary data and primary data are mixed together for the main research problem’s analysis. After the research, the thesis comes out that Swedish loyalty card holders show much awareness/ preference/ satisfaction/ loyalty towards the membership budget hotel. Swedish customers use loyalty card in a constant manner only when the benefit is large and the benefit can be gained fast. For the Swedish customers, the Budget hotel loyalty card’s benefit is important, but the benefit is not big enough to make them feel excited. Simple and clear loyalty card rules are appreciated. Reference groups’ comments, fast internet information, loyalty card rule’s complexity, customers’ previous experiences, original price, psychological quality feeling and perceived price level also affect the loyalty card’s effectiveness. By implementing loyalty card, the membership customers’ satisfaction can be increased. The non-membership customers’ satisfaction isn’t negatively affected. Compared with the Swedish leisure travelers, Swedish business travelers show even stronger and much more stable loyalty towards the membership hotel. Leisure traveler is much benefit oriented. But the business traveler is habit oriented. Psychologically, business travelers think that a budget hotel loyalty card can not provide them as much good feeling as the luxury hotel’s loyalty card does.

Purpose:The purpose of this study is to investigate the most important factors for creating customer loyalty, which contribute to competitive advantage in the DMP industry.   Background: The emergence of the digital music industry in recent years has resulted in a competitive situation with new digital music portals (DMPs) entering the market. A DMP can be defined as ‘an e-business whose core service is to legally offer digital music by means of stream and/or download’. The industry has experienced rapid developmental changes on the online platform with an outcome of a steady growth in online sales. Customers can choose from a large music assortment and DMPs function as intermediaries between right holders and end-consumers, and customers can easily switch between rivals at low costs. Method: The research strategy used in this thesis was a qualitative research strategy. Data was collected from eleven interviews, from people working within the DMP industry, using semi-structured questions. The sample was selected through a combination of convenience and snowball sampling. The collected data was later interpreted and analysed. Coding was used as an analysis method, where the authors selected relevant data and created groups of themes related to the purpose and the research questions. Conclusion: The analysis results show that DMPs have to focus on performance, explicitly performance competing strategies for creation of customer loyalty, which overlaps value and trust creation activities. The most important factors for creating customer loyalty contributing to competitive advantage in this industry are gathered under three concepts: developing innovative new transaction structures, increasing customer affiliation through usability and editorials and to engage the customer in the portal’s service.