Measurement of customer loyalty towards service providers: a conceptual framework

Abstract

The increasing turbulence of business environment and the demand to gain a long-term competitive advantage has incited the research of the relevant issue concerning customer loyalty in the context of services sector. In order to formulate the conceptual framework of objective measurement of customer loyalty to service providers the dimensions of customer loyalty have been analyzed; suggestions to apply behavioral loyalty dimension that is considered to be sufficiently objective, practical and informative were made. The measurement of customer loyalty through the components of this concept, i.e. frequency of purchases and value of purchases, is seen as universal in the aspect of data accessibility. Considering the situations of the accessibility of the data concerning the customers' purchases frequency and value of purchases, the following alternatives of the measurement of customer loyalty in the context of services were suggested: 1) the statistical data; 2) the data of marketing researches / analogy; 2) the assessment of loyalty drivers / questionnaire survey. The provided sequence of the measurement of customer loyalty to service providers is as follows: the estimation of the significance of loyalty components, the definition of the time period of loyalty measurement, the identification of loyalty drivers.