Revealing Drivers of Customer Loyalty : An Empirical Study

Most industries share one ultimate goal within their strategic management - to answer the question of what really drives Customer Loyalty. Especially in highly competitive or mature industries, identifying drivers of Customer Loyalty represents the essential basis of present and future competitive advantages. Ultimately, understanding the nature of customers' expectations and loyalty consequently increases sustainability of your company's corporate management while systematically defining drivers of Customer Loyalty directly leads to higher returns and cash flows. Within the current research, management experts are being given a step-by-step approach of how to systematically analyze drivers of Customer Loyalty by applying the Product Life Cycle Loyalty Portfolio. This new portfolio model combines effectiveness and efficiency as corporate strategic principles on the one hand and statistical regression analysis on the other hand. In order to fulfill the requirement of an empirical study, more than 13,000 customer surveys of the British and German automotive industry have been analyzed for the business years 2010 and 2011 belonging to one international car manufacturer. On the basis of seven hypotheses, several theories have been tested: Do drivers of Customer Loyalty exist? Are those drivers different from drivers of Customer Satisfaction? Are drivers of Customer Loyalty dynamic, influenced by product prototypes, gender, culture or financial contribution? As an outcome, an extension of the current marketing mix has been applied and a step-by-step approach of uplifting corporate Customer Loyalty Strategies has been developed.