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Proposes that successful implementation of a relationship marketing program requires a complement of strategies that satisfies and motivates customers through different phases of relationship development. To accomplish this, firms simultaneously implement transactional marketing strategies and relational marketing strategies. Offers a case study of a non‐profit professional theater to demonstrate how a firm can implement multiple marketing strategies to achieve different relational objectives, and extends these findings to offer recommendations and managerial implications.

Research in customer satisfaction over the past decade has lead to a much richer understanding of service quality and customer expectations. In trying to untangle the linkage between satisfied customers and long‐term success for the organization, however, attention has evolved from a focus on customer satisfaction to a realization that retaining customers and developing loyalty are essential for organizational success. This interpretive investigation focuses on customer retention and loyalty in an effort to understand better these variables in the context of service organizations. In so doing we review the rise of managerial concern for customer retention and loyalty and examine the definitions and relationships of these constructs. Then, to develop a richer understanding of repeat buyers, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with consumers identifying themselves as “loyal”. A typology of loyalty is offered consisting of five levels of repeat buyers, ranging from “prisoners” to “apostles”. Additionally, the managerial implications of this typology are discussed.

Takes a look at the worldwide trend toward loyalty marketing and highlights the reasons for this emphasis on loyalty. Asserts that building customer loyalty is a business strategy, not just a marketing program and that all businesses should seek to boost loyalty and maximize share of customer. Explores the various approaches to structuring customer loyalty strategies. Uses some real‐world examples to illustrate different approaches. Provides a consistent framework for developing a loyalty strategy and program. Offers insight to reduce the amount of time required to develop a loyalty strategy and touches on ways to help marketers avoid some classic mistakes. Maintains that the pursuit of customer loyalty is a perpetual one ‐ more of a journey than a destination.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal how a loyalty program that provides economic rewards for locally produced low-input farm products influences the consumers’ behavior of repeated purchase by focussing on the consumers’ motivation and characteristics.

This study is based on data from a questionnaire survey and actual purchase data obtained from a practical study conducted in Japan. The data were analyzed using regression analysis.

Consumers who gain economic rewards by purchasing locally produced low-input fresh food are not likely to purchase these products exclusively for the economic rewards of the program; rather, they do so to get safe and good quality food and to support local farmers and local farm conservation. The most remarkable finding is that the scheme that provides economic rewards makes such products more affordable for consumers from lower-income households.

This study is of academic value and of value to policy makers and practitioners in the local food supply chain. The study suggests that for increasing and stabilizing the demand for environment-friendly farm products, institutions for creating, designing, and supporting a new market for potential consumers are needed, together with suitable certification systems.

The purpose of the article is to investigate relationship quality in retail relationships as influenced by its antecedents (loyalty programme quality and personal interaction quality) and resulting in customer loyalty to the retailer. The focus is on loyalty programme members' perceptions and differences between segments of consumers with different levels of involvement in the product category.

The method used was a consumer survey. Two waves of cross‐sectional telephone interviewing with 116 and 410 members of a retail loyalty club were conducted. Structural equation modelling served for the estimation of relationships in an integrated conceptual framework among constructs of loyalty programme quality, personal interaction quality, relationship quality and loyalty, relevant to the development of retail relationships.

The findings suggest that loyalty programme quality is important for relationship quality; however, efforts to assure personal interaction quality with customers are needed to improve relationship quality as well as customer loyalty. The study deepens knowledge of relationship quality's antecedents and consequences in the retail environment with regard to segments of customers with different levels of product category involvement.

The research is limited to members of a selected DIY retailer's loyalty programme, not accounting specifically for membership in multiple loyalty programmes. Future research could use different methodologies such as longitudinal studies to examine dynamic relationships among the constructs in the study.

In the retail context, practical implications of the impact of loyalty programme quality and of personal interaction quality on relationship quality and customer loyalty are considered.

The paper contributes to the understanding of members' perceptions and responses to relationship quality as well as to some mechanisms underlying customer loyalty in loyalty programmes.

The proliferation of electronic databases has given rise to many practices and occurrences that pose serious threats to personal privacy. This paper argues that attention to privacy should be an integral part of the database design process, and that database designers are uniquely positioned to ensure that this happens. To motivate students to become privacy‐conscious database design professionals, computer science programs must meet the challenges of implementing an “ethics across the curriculum” methodology to integrate privacy content throughout the design thread of the introductory database course.

Committed customers are profitable to an organization for the long term. Customer commitment forms when a customer's expectation is satisfied and the customer realizes fair value from his/her relationship with the organization. From an organization's perspective, this value reflects customer equity, but from a customer's perspective, it represents the customer's perceived value of the relationship. In order to manage such a relationship successfully, it is necessary to support diverse customer information – such as of‐the‐customer, for‐the‐customer, and by‐the‐customer information. A customer information system (CIS) plays the role of boundary spanning that manages and distributes customer information. But the gap between marketing and IT strategy is a barrier in implementing a successful CIS. The CIS, which includes the database, communication channel, and decision model for relationship management, should be designed to facilitate the two‐way customer relationship exchanges. This paper develops a framework of dynamic customer relationship management, suggests the information technology strategy to support the framework, and illustrates the applicability of such framework and strategy through a real business case.

Investigates the characteristics of the regular customer cards of four major Finnish retail organizations in the daily product sector with respect to the basic characteristics of (customer) relationship marketing. The purpose is to study whether, and to what degree, relationship marketing is the right framework in this regard for today’s retailing in Finland, and how this “new paradigm” can be applied in future to improve the effectiveness of the regular customer cards. Regular customer cards are found to correspond to relationship marketing mainly on its lowest level, and thus at a level where the benefits of relationship marketing are lowest as well. Alternatively, the regular customer systems and programmes are not yet developed enough to take advantage fully of the possibilities of relationship marketing. There is a lot of potential to improve regular customer systems and cards towards more relationship‐based marketing in the daily product sector in retailing by customization, augmentation, and internal marketing.

There exists a vibrant literature dealing with one‐to‐one marketing and mass customization. The practice holds the promise of very satisfied customers, and profitable marketers who can create their own unassailable market positions. One of the building blocks of mass customization is knowledge of the customer and his/her complex set of preferences. There is a significant obstacle to gaining this information, namely the growing trend toward consumer privacy. Traditionally, businesses have collected massive amounts of information, hoping to identify responsive market segments. In the process, they have collected data on numerous individuals who would not realistically become customers. One solution to the problem is a strategic management approach involving an exchange of value between customers and marketers. Using a strategic approach, marketers can target the most attractive consumers, avoiding those whose lifetime value to the firm is low. By employing the relationship management processes of one‐to‐one marketing, marketers can avoid privacy issues altogether. This paper discusses the conceptual background of information based value exchange, proposes a new orientation toward customer relationship management and discusses several implications for marketers.

The relationship between customer loyalty and satisfaction, profitability and customer retention is described within the framework of relationship marketing. The importance of loyal customers and their impact on business profitability is undisputed, but it is more difficult to build customer retention than it may appear. Various strategies including loyalty schemes and discount cards are sometimes used in an effort to retain customers, but their success is questionable. A New Zealand hotel case study is presented which describes customer reactions to a discount card promotion. It was found that customers who purchased the card exhibited the characteristics of Morgan’s “mercenaries”. Although they had high satisfaction, their commitment to the company was low. However, in order to succeed, loyalty programmes need to develop “loyalists”, customers who have high satisfaction, high loyalty and who will stay and be supportive of the company.