Identifying the complex and dynamic factors that help in creating favourable customer expectation and strong customer loyalty.

1. Creating
Customer Engagement
& Customer Loyalty

2.  Objectives of businesses:
 Favourable customer expectation
 Strong customer loyalty.
 Dynamic and complex factors and strategies help to fulfil
these objectives (Johnson, et.al., 2006).
Introduction

3.  What is offered and how it is offered.
 Service quality is an attitude or cognitive judgment that is determined by the
difference in customer expectations from the service and the customer
perceptions about the service as being inferior or superior (Fogli, 2006).
 The customer perception about the service quality determines the customer’s
behaviour in relation to repeat purchases (Fogli, 2006).
 Service quality also influences the chances of a customer spreading positive word
of mouth about the product or service (Anderson &
Mittal, 2000).
Service (product) quality

4. Customer satisfaction
 Customer satisfaction is a cognitive or affective reaction of the customers
towards a product or service based on the service encounters (Rust and
Oliver, 1994).
 It depends on the level of fulfillment of customer expectations.
 Complex set of cognitive, affective or conative response to the services
develops consumer satisfaction (Kanji & Moura, 2002).
 Thus, customer satisfaction is the overall attitude towards a service based on
the comparison of the pre-purchase and post purchase consumption behaviour.

5. Trust
 Trust refers to the confidence the customer has on the company’s
services and is determined by the reliability and integrity factors
(Morgan & Hunt, 1994).
 Fulfilling promises establishes credibility of the company and increases
trust of the customers; this, in turn, ensures customer satisfaction and
customer retention (Singh & Sirdeshmukh, 2000).
 Trust is the prerequisite for patronage behaviour that creates customer
loyalty (Pavlou, 2003).

6. Commitment
 Commitment between the customers and the company refers to the
enduring desire (implicit or explicit) to continue the relationship
between the parties in an exchange process (Moorman, et al., 1992).
 Commitment determines the effectiveness of the marketing efforts to
develop the chances of customer loyalty and predict future
purchases behaviour of the customers (Gundlach, et al., 1995).
 Commitment and trust are the key influencers in determining the
attitudes and future intentions of customers that lead to developing
strong company-customer relationship (Garbarino & Johnson, 1999).

7. Switching costs
 Switching costs refers to the economic, psychological and physical
costs that a customer bears when he changes service providers.
 Higher switching costs restricts switching behaviour (Gremler & Brown,
1996); thus enforcing customer loyalty towards a brand or company.
 It is important to determine effective price levels that will influence
loyal behaviour of the customers by making switching costs high
(Jones, et al., 2000).

8. Corporate image
 Corporate image is the attitude that creates customer perception
and behavioural intentions (Johnson, et al., 2001).
 Corporate image is reflected in the physical artifacts of the company
like the infrastructure, products or services offered and behavioral
aspects like the quality of service offered by the employees (Nguyen
& Leblanc, 2001).
 Perceived positive image of a company among the customer groups
establishes credentials of the company and has the power to control
the customer’s repeat purchase behaviour (Wang, 2010).

9. Service recovery
 The effectiveness of response of a service provider to any service
failure is identified by service recovery (Duffy, et al., 2006).
 It is important for the companies to have an effective plan to win back
aggrieved customers and meet their expectations to make them
satisfied customers; thus influencing customer perception of the
company (Swanson & Kelley, 2001), arresting switch behaviour
(McCollough, et al., 2000) and ensuring customer loyalty (Miller, et al.,
2000).

10. Emotions
 Emotions influence behaviour.
 Customer experiences of using a product or service generates
emotions.
 These emotions have a direct relationship with the customers’ post
consumption behaviour including intention of repeat purchase that
will reflect customer loyalty (Stauss and Neuhaus, 1997; Yi-Ting and
Dean, 2001).

11. Communication
 Interaction with the customers through the stages of pre-purchase,
consumption and post consumption had the capability to influence
customer behaviour.
 Such interactions, through communication, are important to convince
the customers to decide on buying a particular brand and develop
customer preference.

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References