The True Brand Loyalty in the Finnish Tabloid Industry

Asiakas- ja brandiuskollisuutta on tutkittu 1920-luvulta alkaen ja sitä käsittelevän kirjallisuuden kirjo on hyvin laaja. Empiirisiä tutkimuksia löytyy kattava joukko aina pankkimaailmasta päivittäiskaupan tuotteisiin. Iltapäivälehtimarkkinaa tutkivaa empiiristä asiakas- tai brandiuskollisuustutkimusta ei kuitenkaan toistaiseksi ole tieteellisen tutkimuksen saralla tehty. Tässä tutkimuksessa perehdytään asiakas- ja brandiuskollisuuden maailmaan ja tutkitaan brandiuskollisuuden toteutumista suomalaisien iltapäivälehtien keskuudessa. Tutkimuksen keskeisin tavoite on selvittää, voidaanko todeta asiakas- ja brandiuskollisuutta olevan suomalaisien iltapäivälehtien keskuudessa ja mikäli sitä todetaan olevan, mitkä ovat ne tekijät, jotka tämän uskollisuuden muodostumiseen vaikuttavat. Tutkimus toteutettiin yhteistyössä toisen suuren suomalaisen iltapäivälehtitalon kanssa. Empiirinen tutkimus toteutettiin strukturoituna Internet-kyselynä, josta saatu aineisto analysoitiin kvantitatiivisin tutkimusmenetelmin. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että asiakas- ja brandiuskollisuutta löytyy suomalaisien iltapäivälehtien keskuudessa. Tärkeimmät havainnot osoittavat, että muun muassa uskollisuus iltapäivälehden verkkosivustoa kohtaan vaikuttaa positiivisesti uskollisuuteen ja toistuvaan ostokäyttäytymiseen samaa iltapäivälehteä kohtaan. Tämä on merkittävä löytö, sillä asian on monissa aiemmissa tutkimuksissa oletettu olevan päinvastoin. Myös luottamus brandiin, sitoutuneisuus brandiin, asiakkaan kokemat hyödyt ja asiakastyytyväisyys todettiin tutkimustuloksien pohjalta vaikuttavan positiivisesti sekä asenteellisen että behavioristisen uskollisuuden muodostumiseen iltapäivälehtiä kohtaan.

Managing Customer Issues through a Support Channel Network

The importance of after-sales service or service in general can be seen and experienced by customers every day with industrial as well as other non-industrial services or products. This dissertation, drawing on theory and experience, focuses on practical engineering implications, specifically the management of customer issues in the after-sales phase in the mobile phone arena. The main objective of this doctoral dissertation is to investigate customer after-sales issue management, specifically regarding mobile phones. The case studies focus on issue resolution time and the issue of corrective actions. This dissertation consists of a main body and four peer-reviewed journal articles and one manuscript currently under review by a peer-reviewed journal. The main body of this dissertation examines the elements of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention with respect to corrective actions to address customer issues and issue resolution time through literature and empirical studies. The five independent works are case studies supporting the thesis research questions. This study examines four questions: 1) What are the factors affecting corrective actions for customers? 2) How can customer issue resolution time be controlled? 3) What are the factors affecting processes in the service chain? and 4) How can communication be measured in a service chain? In this work, both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods are used. The main body of the thesis reviews the literature regarding the elements that bridge the five case studies. The case studies of the articles and surveys lean more toward the methodology of critical positivism and then apply the interpretive approach in interpreting the results. The case study articles employ various statistical methods to analyze and to interpret the empirical and survey data. The statistical methods were used to create a model that is useful for significantly optimizing issue resolution time. Moreover, it was found that samples for verifying issues provided by the customer neither improve the perceived quality of corrective actions nor the perceived quality of issue resolution time. The term “service” in this work is limited to the technical services that are provided by product manufacturers and after-sales authorized service vendors. On the basis of this research work, it has been observed that corrective actions and issue resolution time are associated with customer satisfaction and hence, according to induction theory, to customer loyalty and retention. This thesis utilizes knowledge of marketing and customer relationships to contribute to the existing body of knowledge concerning information and communication technology for after-sales service recovery of mobile terminals. The established models in the thesis contribute to the existing knowledge of the after-sales process of dealing with customer issues in the field of mobile phones. The findings suggest that process managers could focus more on communication and training provided to the staff as new technology evolves rapidly. The study also suggest the managers formulate strategies for how customers can be kept informed on a regular basis of the status of issues that have been escalated for corrective action. The findings also lay the foundation for the comprehensive objective to control the entire product development process, starting with conceptualization. This implies that robust design should be applied to the new products so that problems affecting customer service quality are not repeated. The objective will be achieved when the entire service chain from product development to the final user can be modeled and this model can be used to support the organization at all levels.

Visual analytics for behavioral and niche market segmentation

Companies require information in order to gain an improved understanding of their customers. Data concerning customers, their interests and behavior are collected through different loyalty programs. The amount of data stored in company data bases has increased exponentially over the years and become difficult to handle. This research area is the subject of much current interest, not only in academia but also in practice, as is shown by several magazines and blogs that are covering topics on how to get to know your customers, Big Data, information visualization, and data warehousing. In this Ph.D. thesis, the Self-Organizing Map and two extensions of it – the Weighted Self-Organizing Map (WSOM) and the Self-Organizing Time Map (SOTM) – are used as data mining methods for extracting information from large amounts of customer data. The thesis focuses on how data mining methods can be used to model and analyze customer data in order to gain an overview of the customer base, as well as, for analyzing niche-markets. The thesis uses real world customer data to create models for customer profiling. Evaluation of the built models is performed by CRM experts from the retailing industry. The experts considered the information gained with help of the models to be valuable and useful for decision making and for making strategic planning for the future.

Impact of Product Quality, Service Quality and Contextual Experience on Customer Perceived Value and Future Buying Intentions

Recognizing that high satisfaction leads to high customer loyalty, companies today are aiming for total customer satisfaction. This article explains relative impact of product quality, service quality and contextual experience on customer perceived value and intention to shop in the future. The data has been collected using a questionnaire from 205 customers of a national retailer chain. The relative importance of product quality, service quality and contextual experience on customer perceived value and thus on customer preference and future intentions was measured using multiple regression. Also, the contribution of perceived value to preference and thus on future buying intention was also measured. Structural Equation Model (SEM) using Amos 4 was used to find the overall fitness of the model. It was found that product quality, service quality and contextual experience have a major influence on customer perceived value

Engagement y productividad en las empresas

El presente trabajo pretende mostrar algunos avances en el término “engagement”, y como puede ser implementado en las organizaciones, teniendo en cuenta los diferentes factores que intervienen, para que los trabajadores se sientan “engaged” dentro de la organización. Además busca relacionar las diferentes habilidades y tipos de liderazgo que los altos mandos utilizan con sus empleados y como éste afecta la productividad de los trabajadores en las organizaciones. Para esto, se realizó una investigación de las clases de liderazgo y los comportamientos de los altos mandos, que pueden afectar positiva y negativamente el vínculo y sentido de pertenencia que tienen los trabajadores con la empresa en la que trabajan. Considerando importante las habilidades del liderazgo transformacional, para lograr desarrollar algún grado de engagement en los trabajadores, lo cual genera a su vez, un alza en la productividad de sus resultados dentro de la organización.

Influencia de la relación estratégica comunitaria y el marketing en la salud financiera de las organizaciones en mercados internacionales

La globalización de mercados ha generado una serie de cambios en la estructura del comercio internacional, como el surgimiento de áreas de libre comercio, que son el resultado de las integraciones económicas, las cuales han facilitado los flujos de capital, recursos y personas. La internacionalización no solamente se ha convertido en una estrategia para aprovechar las oportunidades que se dan en los mercados internacionales, sino también en un medio de diversificación del riesgo para reducir la dependencia del mercado doméstico. Sin embargo, para emprender un proceso de internacionalización, es necesario conocer muy bien el contexto dentro del cual se desarrollan los clientes, puesto que la falta de conocimiento del entorno puede perjudicar la salud financiera de la empresa. De ahí la importancia de utilizar una definición de comunidad y unas estrategias comunitarias con las cuales se identifiquen las necesidades, objetivos e intereses de la comunidad, para establecer un relación a largo plazo que procure el desarrollo de ambas partes. La relación estratégica comunitaria y el marketing impactan positivamente la salud financiera de la empresa, en la medida en que este desarrollo mutuo, tanto de la comunidad como de la empresa, no solamente incrementa el interés y el compromiso por seguir interactuando; también crea vínculos afectivos entre ambas partes, lo cual consolida aún más la perdurabilidad de la relación, logrando así una fidelización de los clientes y por ende aumentando la rentabilidad de la empresa.

Shopping motives as antecedents of e-satisfaction and e-loyalty

Customer loyalty is fundamental to the profitability and survival of e-tailers. Yet research on antecedents of e-loyalty is relatively limited. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the effect of motives for online shopping on e-satisfaction and e-loyalty. A structural equations model is developed and tested through data from an online survey involving 797 customers of two UK-based e-tailers focussing on hedonic products. The results suggest that convenience, variety seeking, and social interaction help predict e-satisfaction, and that social interaction is the only shopping motive examined with a direct relationship to e-loyalty. Data also show that e-satisfaction is a strong determinant of e-loyalty. These findings are discussed in the light of previous research and avenues of future research are proposed.

Fidelidade ao cartão de crédito em troca de milhas aéreas: um estudo empírico desta relação no mercado brasileiro

No competitivo mercado brasileiro de cartão de crédito, a presença de um programa de fidelidade pode ser uma atividade de marketing relevante para os bancos reterem os seus clientes. No entanto, em um cenário com vários programas de fidelidade similares, é necessário que os bancos encontrem formas eficazes de estimular as intenções do cliente em direção ao uso continuado do seu cartão. Estes programas são comumente requisitados por clientes que procuram trocar pontos (milhas) por passagens aéreas. As milhas aéreas são recompensas ofertadas pelo banco, porém, envolvem elevados custos e são controladas por empresas intermediárias que também buscam a fidelidade deste cliente para si. Em um mercado ainda em desenvolvimento no tema, existe a barreira dos clientes não conhecerem as dinâmicas dos programas e não entenderem o resgate (troca) como um esforço do banco para premiá-lo. Neste contexto, torna-se importante que os bancos compreendam os fatores que mais influenciam a associação de marca do cliente e a fidelidade ao seu cartão. O presente trabalho propõe identificar estes fatores através da aplicação de uma survey com uma amostra de usuários de cartão de crédito participantes de programas de fidelidade. O estudo identificou que, na visão do portador do cartão, a atratividade do programa, o conhecimento sobre programa, os custos de troca percebidos e a preferência por milhas como recompensa são fatores que o banco deve considerar se quiser obter melhores associações à sua marca no âmbito do processo de resgate de milhas. Verificou-se que a associação de marca não é um elemento necessário para se atingir a fidelidade do cliente, contudo, sugere-se que a marca possa, além de ajudar no processo de fidelização, aproximar o cliente do banco e possivelmente apresentá-lo a outros produtos, alavancando assim os resultados do banco.

e-Pontos: Uma solução embarcada de automação comercial aplicada a clubes de fidelidade baseado em tecnologia RFID e esmart card

In practically all vertical markets and in every region of the planet, loyalty marketers have adopted the tactic of recognition and reward to identify, maintain and increase the yield of their customers. Several strategies have been adopted by companies, and the most popular among them is the loyalty program, which displays a loyalty club to manage these rewards. But the problem with loyalty programs is that customer identification and transfer of loyalty points are made in a semiautomatic. Aiming at this, this paper presents a master's embedded business automation solution called e-Points. The goal of e-Points is munir clubs allegiances with fully automated tooling technology to identify customers directly at the point of sales, ensuring greater control over the loyalty of associate members. For this, we developed a hardware platform with embedded system and RFID technology to be used in PCs tenant, a smart card to accumulate points with every purchase and a web server, which will provide services of interest to retailers and customers membership to the club

Customer Relationship Management-PeopleSoft CRM

1 RESUMEN 1.1 Resumen (español) El intercambio y comercio tanto de bienes como servicios se remonta a tiempos inmemoriales dentro de la historia de la humanidad. Desde sus inicios tempranos con el intercambio o trueque de productos en el Neolítico hasta nuestra época híper globalizada, en la que existen clientes potenciales en el otro extremo del mundo, podemos decir que se ha recorrido un largo camino. Con el paso del tiempo y la evolución de la sociedad y la tecnología, así como la evolución empresarial, se ha visto necesario la implementación de estrategias para lograr la fidelización y satisfacción de los clientes. De esta forma entendimos que ya no valía simplemente con vender un producto a un cliente, si no que si queríamos establecer una relación continúa con el mismo, debíamos lograr su satisfacción y por tanto su fidelización. Como forma de extender la relación más allá de una simple venta, las empresas modernas empezaron a implementar diversas estrategias. De esta forma aparecieron los primeros centros de atención al cliente, las primeras aplicaciones hechas a medida para dar soporte a los clientes y por fin los sistemas CRM tal y como los concebimos hoy día. El presente proyecto fin de carrera da una explicación de dichos sistemas indicando cuáles son sus objetos fundamentales y cómo implementan la estrategia CRM y profundiza en uno de los sistemas CRM más utilizados: PeopleSoft CRM, dando una explicación detallada de dicho sistemas así como de los conceptos y lenguaje de programación de dicho sistema CRM. 1.2 SUMMARY (ENGLISH) The exchange and trade of goods as well and services goes back to ancient times in the history of mankind. Since its early beginning with the bartering of products in the Neolithic to our globalized hyper era, in which there are potential customers on the other side of the world, we can say that it has come a long way. After a certain length of time, the society and technology evolution, and also the enterprise development, has been necessary to implement strategies to achieve customer loyalty and satisfaction. We understood in this way that it no longer simply worth to sell a product to a customer, otherwise if we wanted to establish a relationship continues with the same, we should ensure their satisfaction and thus their loyalty. As a way to extend the relationship beyond a simple sale, modern enterprises began to implement several strategies. Therefore appeared the first customer service centers, the first applications tailored to support customers and finally the CRM systems as we know it today. This final project gives an explanation of such systems by indicating what the core objects are and how to implement the CRM strategy, deeping into one of the most widely used CRM systems: PeopleSoft CRM, and also giving a detailed explanation of this system and its programming language.

The effects of experience in loyalty card adoption on the importance of the attributes of loyalty schemes

The popularity of loyalty programs worldwide shows that this is one of the most efficient marketing tools in highly competitive markets to retain customers. The saturation of loyalty schemes themselves can lead to a fierce competition between firms to gain wider penetration for their cards. The experience of the customers regarding adoption of loyalty programs can affect their attitude towards the different attributes of the programs. We found that more experienced customers evaluate the importance of the soft attributes of the loyalty schemes higher.

Customer Perception of Drive-Thru Service

The rapid growth of off-premise dining and, consequently, drive- thru service, presents the challenge of building customer loyalty in a highly competitive marketplace. In this study, customer perceptions of drive-thru service associated with quick service restaurants were examined. Results suggest that service time appears to differ among quick service restaurants, even those within the same chain. Employee courtesy was rated positively at all restaurants, as was food quality. The implications of these results for restaurateurs who offer drive-thru service are discussed.

Utveckling av lojalitetsprogram - individanpassade erbjudanden : Marknadsföring genom CRM-strategier

Den ökade konkurrenssituationen mellan företag är ett resultat på att handeln har globaliserats. Konsumenter är idag mer medvetna om vad företag har att erbjuda, och det är lätt att välja alternativa företag om ett specifikt företag inte lever upp till konsumentens förväntningar. Detta ställer krav på att företag ständigt måste arbeta med och utveckla sina strategier för att skapa konkurrensfördelar. Idag arbetar många företag med lojalitetsprogram som är ett typexempel på en CRM-strategi. CRM-strategier och lojalitetsprogram syftar till att göra konsumenten mer lojal, för att möjliggöra att konsumenten skall välja att göra återupprepande och mer frekventa köp. Lojalitetsprogrammen måste dock uppdateras och förändras, för att ständigt kunna vara konkurrenskraftiga. Företag arbetar därmed för att skapa ett mervärde, det vill säga erbjuda en servicelösning som är utöver vad konsumenten förväntar sig att få från företag. Kundlojalitet kan utvecklas genom att företag skapar långsiktiga relationer med konsumenterna, och en relation mellan parterna kan utvecklas genom att företag lyssnar på konsumenterna, för att få reda på dess behov och önskemål. Forskning indikerar att individanpassade erbjudanden kan bidra till att konsumenterna än mer tenderar att bli lojala, detta eftersom individanpassade erbjudanden är erbjudanden som baseras på konsumentens unika köpbeteende, vilket möjliggör för träffsäkerhet och relevans. Syftet med denna studie är att mäta konsumenters efterfrågan på individanpassade erbjudanden, för att undersöka om konsumenterna faktiskt efterfrågar och kommer ta till sig dessa erbjudanden. Frågeställningarna är; på vilket sätt kan efterfrågan på individanpassade erbjudanden bidra till ett företags konkurrensfördelar samt på vilket sätt skiljer sig efterfrågan på individanpassade erbjudanden beroende på butikernas geografiska placering. Studien är baserad på en kvantitativ surveyundersökning riktad till konsumenter, med en kvalitativ semi-strukturerad intervju för att erhålla viktig information vid utformandet av frågeformuläret. Resultatet för studien visade att konsumenter värdesätter att få individanpassade erbjudanden, och att dessa erbjudanden kan bidra till ett företags konkurrensfördelar eftersom erbjudandena möjliggör att servicekvaliteten kan öka vilket innebär att dessa erbjudanden kan upplevas ha ett mervärde. I denna studie återfanns dock inte några skillnader på efterfrågan av individanpassade erbjudanden beroende på butikernas geografiska placering.

Service Loyalty: An Integrative Model and Examination across Service Contexts

Marketing academics and practitioners generally agree that customer loyalty is vital to business success. There is less agreement on the factors that determine customer loyalty, particularly in service contexts. Research on the determinants of service loyalty has taken three distinct paths: 1) quality/value/satisfaction; 2) relationship quality; and, 3) relational benefits. In this research, the authors coalesce these paths to derive a model that links dimensions of customer loyalty (cognitive, affective, intention, and behavioral) with a system of determinants. The model is tested with data from varied services (airlines, banks, beauty salons, hospitals, hotels, and mobile telephone) and 3,500 customers in China. Results are consistent across contexts and support a multidimensional view of customer loyalty. Key loyalty determinants are customer satisfaction, commitment, service fairness, service quality, trust, and a construct new to service loyalty models—commercial friendship. The research contributes to the literature by providing a more complete, integrated view of customer loyalty and its determinants in services contexts.

As redes sociais online na hotelaria

Dissertação de Mestrado, Direção e Gestão Hoteleira, Escola Superior de Gestão, Hotelaria e Turismo, Universidade do Algarve, 2016