附录B 外文原文
Mechanics of engendering customer loyalty:
A conceptual framework
作者：Medha Srivastava, Alok Kr. Rai
来源：IIMB Management Review (2018) 30, 207–218
Introduction
Customer loyalty, the “holy grail” of marketing, has long been regarded as a business question of immense impor-tance. The seemingly intangible, yet commercial merits of customer loyalty have placed it at a significantly strategic position in almost every organisation that faces a business environment characterised by hyper competitive pressures due to supply substantially surpassing demand, loosening of customer bonds and higher probability of corporate fail-ures.
Hence, customer loyalty continues to remain elusive for most marketers as even the most carefully designed cus-tomer centric measures, popularly known as loyaltyprogrammes, have merely managed to retain customers at a superficial level. We submit that loyalty programmes have largely failed in building loyalty, as they are based on the fundamentally flawed premise of reward for retention being the driver for loyalty.
Customer loyalty has been monopolised by various pro-motional schemes devised to offer benefits to the custom-ers through revisiting the same company, recommending the same brand and repurchasing the same product over time. But instead of infusing loyalty among customers, these loyalty programmes and schemes have merely ensured the customersrsquo; patronage till they receive a rela-tively more tempting offer from another company. So, this model of infusing loyalty among customers was not excep-tionally effective as temptation could not form the basis of loyalty. A relationship developed on the basis of temptation is predisposed to get shaky once greater benefits are spot-ted elsewhere.Marketers mostly have been erring in internalising and implementing the very essence of customer loyalty by con-sidering it merely as successful retention. The general mechanisms of much celebrated customer loyalty pro-grammes are evidence of such short sightedness where behavioural patterns, desirable for obvious reasons, are encouraged without taking into account the underlying and understated affective and cognitive processes. At the same time, the world has also been witness to several brands with cult status whose customers require no loyalty points to revere and religiously pursue them. These brands could create such a committed following that preference for the brand became strong enough among their customers to ensure an obstinate price insensitivity and a keen sense of affiliation with the brand.
Recently Forbes1,an American business magazine that publishes original articles on a variety of subjects related to industry, investing, technology, finance, communications and marketing, declared Apple as the most valuable brand holding a value of $124 billion2, followed by Microsoft whose brand value is about half that of Apples. Also, anybody with an interest in technology and electronic gadgets would tes-tify to the attraction that Apple holds for its customers. In the face of the tremendous customer loyalty that it enjoys, what is interesting is that Apple has never designed an offi-cial loyalty programme for its customers!3 The online store website of the company states that “sometimes, a random act of appreciation can reward an employee, impress a cli-ent, or motivate a business prospect in a way that nothing else can”4 which seems to subtly communicate the idea of inspiring loyalty by touching the lives of customers through superior products and services, and of invoking a distinct sense of prestige associated with the brand. Such an approach may be more effective in reaping dividends for the companys profitability.
Another instance of similar extraordinary customer loy-alty, independent of loyalty programmes and schemes, is Louis Vuitton. Yim et al. (2008) pointed that this famous French fashion brand prefers to invest in cultivating “affec-tionate” associations with its customers, and encourages their passion for the brand by developing a sense of inti-macy. The brand has no official loyalty programme but enjoys the enviable loyalty of its customers. Brands like Har-ley Davidson motorcycles and Levis jeans launched their official loyalty programmes just to offer greater rewards to their already loyal customers.
We submit that the cases discussed above illustrate the overrated significance of customer loyalty programmes to enhance and preserve “true” loyalty among the customers, and indicate a means through which customer loyalty is con-tinually galvanised. The truest character of customer loyalty lies much beyond the spectrum of customer loyalty pro-grammes, however captivating they may be, as these pro-grammes fail to fully acknowledge that although customer behaviour is of great importance to business, there is moreto customer loyalty than repurchases and revisits. It is made up of the attitude, behaviour and cognition of a customer which gets reflected in his preferring and patronising a brand, at times even at a premium. The core of customer loyalty is a source of powerful customer dynamics, and this calls for diving deeper into the connotations of customer loy-alty in order to arrive at a clearer comprehension of the con-cept for corporates.
Customer loyalty
Woodruff (1997) pointed out that service providers usually perceive customer loyalty as a significant source of competi-tive advantage. Srivastava and Rai (2013) underlined the sig-nificant impact of customer loyalty on the success and profitability of a business, while Rai and Srivastava (2014a) opined that organisations with a relationship oriented approach have customer loyalty as their key objective, and suggested that customer loyalty “can be understood as the customers predisp
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