Loyalty and its role in customer relationship management 02222 - Essay Example

This severely reduces the customer retention of the firm. Therefore maintaining the loyalty of the customers is imperative to organizational success. The companies are constantly seeking out for new ways to retain their existing customers. This paper is based on the study of customer relationship and how it is important in maintaining the customer loyalty. The consumer behaviour can be explained as the response that the consumers express under certain circumstances. These circumstances are often on the grounds of introduction of new products or services, post purchase behaviour and gradual change in the consumption patter of the society.

These factors are always studies by the marketers so that they can provide the proper value addition for the consumers (Allentuck, 2007). The loyal of a customer towards a brand is mostly dependent on hid post purchase behaviour, which is turn is related to the buying process of the customer. The buying process of the customers can be divided into stages like need recognition, information search, evaluating alternatives, finalizing the purchase, post purchase behaviour. Among these four stages the post purchase behaviour determines whether or not the customer will remain loyal to the company.

Customer loyalty can be described by the customer’s tendency to voluntarily make repeated purchase from one particular company. Anderson and Kerr (2008) stated that customer loyalty is proportional to their satisfaction level; more satisfied a customer is, the more likely he is to make a repeat purchase. The satisfaction of a customer can be assessed by the following five dimensions, which are cognitive, affective, conative, situational and social norms (Anderson and Kerr, 2009). The level of cognition suggests the level of relevancy between the customers’ needs or preferences and the offered products or services.

The Affective dimension indicates how the customer