Customer Loyalty

Even with researchers’ dedicated effort on the research of the ultimate outcome of business, which is customer satisfaction, there are also researchers proposed that the insufficiency to recruit customer satisfaction as the very research dependent variable. Liao and Chiang (2005) described customer satisfaction as the goal of business performance. The level of customer satisfaction is often derived from examining customers’ opinions. As long as business achieved high customer satisfaction, high company revenue seems to be in hands.

However, Deming (1986), who is the first to gave the proposition regarding to the insufficient recruiting customer satisfaction to be the only dependent variable. Jones and Sasser (1995) stated that customer satisfaction cannot guarantee the customers will be loyal because they have the freedom to make choice. This freedom to make choice is believed to be the intrinsic need of people. Deci and Ryan (1991) further stated that self-determination stems from intrinsic need, and the self-determination is the experience of choice in determining personal behavior and being freedom from control. A more recent researcher, Stewart (1997), even expressed explicitly as that the satisfied customer is insufficient for business success. As a result, like what Oliver (1999) stated, the loyalty becomes to be the strategic business goal and been recruited to be the dependent variable ramified from the paradigm shift.

Owing to the flexibility of connecting to other websites, the effort to retain customer loyalty seems need more and become more difficult compare to before. Reichheld, Markey, and Hopton (2000) argued that satisfied customers are more likely to return and eventually form emotional ties with the Web site. It is, however, increasingly difficult for online companies to satisfy and bond their customers, who are demanding ever better information and services, and showing less and less tolerance for malfunctioning Web sites.

Customer loyalty is defined by (Gremler and Brown, 1996) as "the degree to which a customer exhibits repeat purchasing behavior from a service provider, possesses a positive attitudinal disposition toward the provider, and considers using only this provider when a need for this service arises" (p. 173).

Oliver (1997) defined the customer loyalty explicitly as that customer’s deeply held commitment to repurchase or to repatronize a preferred product or service and act the same patterns of behaviors to continuously commit the same product of a same brand.

Cognitive loyalty.

Cognitive loyalty is the first phase to loyalty. As long as the customer thinks that the information offered by the brand is preferred by the customer, cognitive loyalty emerges. Cognition in this phase can be traced back to recent experience-based information. For instance, a discount is preferred by the customer or a well known

brand is preferred by the customer.

Affective loyalty.

Liking is the important aspect in this phase. Affective loyalty refers to the liking for the brand ramified from positive satisfaction. However, as what Oliver (1999) stated, customers switch to other brand as customers commit to this phase of loyalty.

Conative loyalty.

Conative loyalty, or termed as behavioral loyalty, is influenced by repeated event of positive affect toward the brand. The commitment is characterized as customer’s intention to rebuy the brand and is more akin to motivation. However, Oliver (1999) believed that customers’ committing to this phase of loyalty will have good and anticipated intention to rebuy but cannot be realized.

Action loyalty.
Kuhl and Beckmann (1985) proposed that as customers committed to this phase of loyalty, customers will prove their loyalty to the specific brand by action, which means customers will buy. In this phase, even there is the obstacle for the customers to purchase, they will overcome the obstacle. For example, when one brand’s product
is under shortage and preferred by the customer who committed to the action loyalty phase, they will even wait till the shelf is filled with their preferred product of a specific brand.