Title: Influence of loyalty programmes on satisfaction and retail store loyalty

Authors: S. Deepa; P. Chitramani

Addresses: Avinashilingam School of Management Technology, Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women, Coimbatore – 641 043, Tamil Nadu, India ' Avinashilingam School of Management Technology, Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women, Coimbatore – 641 043, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: The fierce competition in retail industry requires the stores to adopt loyalty programmes to gain the interest of the customers in maintaining relationship with the store (Bendapudi and Berry 1997; Noordhoff et al., 2004). Retailers are looking for every opportunity to creatively improve customer satisfaction and boost customer loyalty with store. This paper explores various loyalty programmes of the food and grocery retailers and its impact on store satisfaction and store loyalty. It also investigates the reverse relationship of store satisfaction and store loyalty on programme loyalty. Correlation and path modelling analysis support strong positive relationship of programme satisfaction with programme loyalty and store satisfaction. Programme loyalty exhibits positive relationship with store satisfaction and store loyalty. However, programme satisfaction does not have direct positive relationship with store loyalty. Store loyalty has significant effect on programme loyalty. This paper hence emphasises the importance and effectiveness of loyalty programmes in store loyalty.

Keywords: store loyalty; loyalty programmes; store satisfaction; programme loyalty; loyalty programme satisfaction; loyalty programme benefits; food retailing; grocery retailing; customer loyalty; customer satisfaction; retail industry; retailers; retail stores.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEMR.2014.066461

International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 2014 Vol.6 No.2, pp.89 - 111

Received: 28 Jul 2013
Accepted: 07 Jun 2014
Published online: 14 Jan 2015 *

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