Importance Of Customer Loyalty In Retail

Today the retailing sector is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world. Retailers nowadays understand the importance of satisfying customer needs as essentially customers determine how successful an organisation will be. Retailers such as Tesco and Aldi today continually aim to provide Superior quality merchandise to customers whilst enforcing quality control thus this area could be said to be central to a retail company’s success. In addition retail firms are also constantly striving for the best quality customer service possible to gain a completive edge over rivals, customer loyalty and the quality of their customer service is at the forefront of the minds of some of the leading retailers. This is due the understanding that those factors play a large part in the success of retail companies as ultimately it all comes down to whether or not the customer is satisfied. What constitutes customer loyalty and what makes up loyalty has been a much debated topic of recent with no definitive answer. However customer loyalty could be seen as a continuity level of a customer related to a product that involves the relationship between an individual’s relative attitude and repeat patronage (Dick and Basu, 1994) within this essay I aim to identify how the quality of merchandise effects customer loyalty and how customer loyalty can be maximise. However I also aim to identify how organisations can provide the best quality customer service whilst making sure customers receive the best possible service.
Modern retail organisations now heavily rely on the quality of merchandise provided by their suppliers as their customers expect quality, thus quality management remains a key ingredient for competitive success (Flynn et al. 1995, Soterio...

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... level. Factors such as the quality of customer service and customer loyalty have gained much importance over the last decade and have become amongst the most important factors to the success of retail organisations. Major retailers are constantly striving to identify new schemes to maximise customer loyalty and new ways to identify customer’s desires. This paper has provided a critical analysis specifically aim at explaining factors such as customer loyalty and how it could be maximised and how the quality of customer service could be maximised. From my research its evident that quality control is critical in achieving the best customer service possible in turn leading to customer satisfaction which leads to customer loyalty. Consistent appraisal of customer service quality is something what should be done to maintain & improve the customer service quality levels.