Understanding loyalty to invest in loyalty

As brands and businesses continue to consider and invest more in customer loyalty, gaining clarity on what loyalty is, helps to determine:

1.   Why it’s important to invest in customer loyalty as a growth strategy and

2.   How to achieve it as a profitable outcome.

For the first time in the ongoing series of for love or money loyalty research studies, the for love or money 2017 study set out to understand what loyalty is – from the consumers’ point of view.

We asked the question …

Beyond enrolling in a LP, what does loyalty mean to you?

A list of 11 indicators of loyalty were provided based on an insight that each demonstrated a behaviour (transactional and rational) or a belief (emotional).

The research revealed that consumers ranked behavior indicators of ‘purchasing more’ and ‘purchasing more often’ from a brand over the longer-term vs similar competitor options as the top 2 indicators of loyalty.

Trusting the brand/business with their information’ and ‘recommending the brand/business to other people’ followed as the two belief indicators of loyalty.  

From this we have determined a definition of customer loyalty as:

Loyalty is both behaviour and belief .

Behaviour is a transactional connection identified by purchasing more and more often over the longer term where similar competitive forces are in play.

Belief is an emotional connection where trust is inherent and recommendation results .

With this clarity in mind, it is then easier to focus on ‘how to achieve’ it which is where each organisation's unique loyalty objectives and customer interaction become critical ingredients.

If you would like to know more about customer loyalty, what it is and how to achieve it, download a complimentary copy of the Executive Summary of for love or money 2017 or you can purchase the full 100+ page edition of the report.

Have a happy loyalty day!