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Loyalty membership is widely used as a marketing strategy to secure customer’s loyalty in many business sectors. The purpose of this paper is to focus on loyalty membership of customer in Malaysian luxury hotels, specifically, in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by looking into the perceived value of economic, interaction and psychological needs.

Quantitative cross-sectional research was conducted to explore the feedback from customers who have loyalty membership with a luxury hotel. Surveyed data of 489 respondents were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

There is a significant positive relationship between the psychological needs and perceived value. The relationship between the perceived value and customer’s loyalty is also significant and positive. However, there is no significant relationship between the economic value and the interaction constructs with the perceived value. The perceived value functions as a mediator for the economic value, interaction and psychological needs in respect of customer’s loyalty.

Hotel management should prioritise addressing the elements of psychological needs to enhance the perceived value from the customers’ perspective. The strength of the perceived value indirectly stimulates customer’s loyalty to a hotel, followed by the interaction and economic value from the customer value perspective to ensure customer’s loyalty.

This research highlights on how customers can be secured by a luxury hotel chain through a loyalty membership strategy. The knowledge generated from this research is expected to provide insights to practitioners on how to enhance their loyalty membership marketing strategy.

This article aims to examine US loyalty marketing industry size and analyzes growth trends.

The article provides a discussion on COLLOQUY's benchmark‐setting measurement.

US loyalty rewards program membership has reached 1.3 billion, according to COLLOQUY research that provides the first comprehensive census‐taking of loyalty marketing since the modern loyalty era began with frequent flyer incentives in 1981. COLLOQUY's benchmark‐setting measurement, based on a fourth‐quarter 2006 analysis of a dozen business sectors, reveals that the average US household belongs to 12 loyalty programs. In a key finding, the COLLOQUY census shows that “active participation” in loyalty programs is a blended average of 39.5 percent across all sectors analyzed, a number that COLLOQUY experts characterized as “dismal.” Of the 12 programs per average household, 4.7 yield active participation. The census results raise a major question. Does the participation data mean the loyalty empire has reached a saturation point? The response from COLLOQUY experts: “Loyalty memberships are flying dangerously high. Fat membership roles may look good in a press release, but active loyalty program members are the only members who count.”

The loyalty marketing industry has experienced significant growth. Low active participation rates signal that millions of customer files in a database do not signify a successful loyalty strategy. Smart enrollment strategies should suggest a finite population of best or highest potential spenders.

The article provides proprietary business‐to‐business research on the size and scope of the US loyalty marketing industry.

This study aims to investigate the impact of the loyalty program members’ satisfaction toward the hotel loyalty program benefits and the customer management relationship initiatives of individual hotels on the brand relationship quality (BRQ), i.e. their relationship quality with the hotel brand, and its outcomes. The moderating impact of membership level on the hypothesized relationships was also investigated.

A usable sample of 920 active members of a hotel loyalty program was obtained. Structural equation modeling with partial least squares method was used to estimate the structural relationships and to investigate the moderating effect of membership level.

Employee’s customer orientation, membership communication and hotel stay-related benefits are determinants of the loyalty program members’ BRQ. BRQ is also confirmed as a higher-order construct of three latent variables which include trust, satisfaction and commitment. Moderating effects of the membership were partially supported in this study. The strongest effect of BRQ is on members’ word of mouth followed by shares of purchase. BRQ is found to have negative relationship with members’ willingness to serve as marketing resource, but the impact was small.

This is a cross-sectional study with a population of active loyalty program members of only one luxury hotel group. The sample size of the top-tier members is also smaller in comparison to the other two groups.

This study contributes to the understanding of the antecedents and consequences of BRQ and the body of knowledge about loyalty program for hotel industry.

This is one of the few studies investigating the effectiveness of hotel loyalty programs from the active members’ perspective and the moderating effect of membership level on the relationships among BRQ, its antecedents and its outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate customer loyalty program membership effects from a multi‐faceted relational outcome perspective.

A model was developed to assess hypothesized loyalty program effects on a series of linkages between relationship commitment and a variety of relational outcomes. The study's hypotheses are tested with customer survey data from an upscale department store chain. Structural model multi‐group analysis is used to test the hypotheses between members (n=1,239) and non‐members (n=743) of the department store's customer loyalty program.

The findings display the surprisingly limited impact of loyalty program membership on the tested relational outcomes. Loyalty program membership favorably influences customers' desires to increase their purchases and provide complaint feedback to the firm. However, loyalty program membership fails to favorably impact four key advocacy outcomes; namely, customers' willingness to provide personal referrals, marketing research support, share personal information, and demonstrate openness to firm promotions.

The results are based on a large sample of highly educated and affluent customers of a specific retailer, encompassing members of one particular loyalty program.

The results provide cautionary evidence as to what marketers may be able to gain from loyalty programs as a relationship marketing tool for impacting firm advocacy behaviors.

The tested model captures potential contributions of customers as advocates to the firm. The mixed empirical support demonstrates the limited impact of loyalty programs on strengthening non‐purchase‐related outcomes.

The purpose of this article is to explore linkages between committed customers and their willingness to serve as advocates and investigate the moderating influence of B2B loyalty programs toward supporting customer advocacy behaviors.

A model was developed to assess linkages between customer commitment and an assortment of customer advocacy behaviors, including sharing information, marketing research support, word‐of‐mouth referrals, and increasing repatronage. The model was tested on 248 agricultural business clients of a chemical manufacturer using confirmatory factor analysis. Multi‐group analysis was conducted to assess hypothesized B2B loyalty program membership effects.

The findings suggest that customers with stronger levels of commitment are indeed more willing to contribute as customer advocates. Surprisingly, B2B loyalty program membership shows no significant moderating effects on the tested model.

The tested model provides an expanded view of customer advocacy. Researchers are advised to regard this work as a starting‐point for expanded hypotheses development of future customer advocacy models.

The study considers the potential for how business customers can be further engaged to serve as advocates and thereby help improve the firm's marketing performance. However, when loyalty program membership is firm‐determined, marketers should not expect that the program will enhance customer advocacy behaviors toward the sponsoring firm.

Since much of the previous work on customer advocacy has been based on anecdotal evidence, the study advances the relationship marketing literature by providing empirical evidence for the multi‐dimensional view of customer advocacy behaviors and further argues that customer lifetime value (CLV) encapsulates customer advocacy.

Previous research has explored the impact of customer participation in organizational‐sponsored loyalty programs on customer loyalty; however, the findings are mixed. Other research, outside the loyalty program literature, reveals that customers who socially interact with other customers, via participation in brand communities, often exhibit an intense loyalty to the sponsoring brands. Proposes to investigate the following questions: “Can loyalty programs be differentiated based on whether or not members perceive a sense of community?”; and “Does a perception of a sense of community impact member loyalty to sponsoring organizations?”

Q‐technique factor analysis is utilized analyzing statements from loyalty program participants. Principal component factor and cluster analyses confirm a two‐tiered classification schema distinguishing loyalty programs based on perceptions of communal benefits. Differences between the two factors are explored. A survey developed from the Q‐sort analysis was then administered to 153 loyalty program participants, providing evidence that consumers are more loyal to communal programs.

Loyalty programs can be distinguished based on the sense of community which members perceive. Furthermore, consumers are more loyal to communal programs than to programs that simply use financial incentives. Communal programs elicit stronger emotional connections and participants are significantly less predisposed to competitor switching.

This study integrates the theory of sense of community into the marketing literature, also offering researchers a nine‐item, unidimensional scale to measure the construct within the context of loyalty programs. Confusion in the literature regarding the efficacy of loyalty programs is diminished by showing a positive relationship between loyalty and a member's perceptions of community.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the construct of retail customer experience (CE) and its links to satisfaction and loyalty; and to test whether loyalty programmes perform a moderating effect on those links.

A variety of retail attributes are integrated to develop a holistic CE construct using formative measures, with four in-built, differentiated replication studies conducted in the supermarket and department store sectors in China.

The empirical results confirm the model of CE’s impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty; but reveal that loyalty programmes perform an insignificant moderating role in enhancing the linkages in the model.

Further studies may examine whether our findings hold true for each individual loyalty programme. The paper calls for more studies based on multiple, in-built, differentiated replication studies and measures to encourage publication of negative empirical results so as to ensure empirical generalization and self-correction in the literature.

Retail managers should focus attention on the design and delivery of great CE, without placing great reliance on loyalty programmes. Both cognitive and emotional attributes of retailing services should be considered for managing a holistic CE.

The paper examines a model of CE with loyalty programme as a possible moderator; it uses formative measures of CE, multiple in-built replications and reports negative empirical results, which are critical to the development of scientific progress in retail management research.

This study aims to determine the antecedents and consequences of information source choice to support a purchase decision for services high in experience attributes.

The authors conduct two studies to test their propositions. Study 1 is a single-category application using data from a national survey of 974 consumers who recently made a hotel-stay purchase/reservation. Correspondence analysis was used to identify search patterns, and regression analysis was used to identify their antecedents and influence on search outcomes. Study 2 is a cross-category study using data from a survey of 422 MTurk respondents reporting on search processes across six different services contexts, including hotel reservations. In this study, the authors seek generalization of their results to other services categories.

The authors identify four dimensions that characterize what information sources consumers, on average, use together when purchasing services. It is found that loyalty program membership and consistency in service delivery across a brand’s outlets for the brands in a consumer’s evoked set are important determinants of search patterns. Search patterns partially mediate the impact of consumer characteristics, choice context and choice set characteristics on search effort and, ultimately, on price paid.

An understanding of the factors that are associated with consumers’ choices of information sources and whether these choices are systematically related to search outcomes has implications for market segmentation and for marketers’ initiatives with respect to what information content to emphasize across sources.

The contribution is an understanding of the antecedents and consequences of consumer search patterns – and what information sources consumers tend to use together, considering the diversity of both internet and non-internet sources. There are limited insights in the services literature regarding how the internet impacts information search processes.

The purpose of this study is to enhance understanding of the club's role in the customer relationships of a telecommunications company by re‐considering the concepts of frequency and commitment in a telecom‐customer club.

We interviewed telecom customers that were members of a Swedish telecom company's customer club. The approach was to understand the customer evaluation of the customer club. We conducted 44 in‐depth interviews with members of the loyalty club.

We found an umbrella concept for the club regarding loyalty: a keeping function, which divided the customer club in two ways: the affective role makes the customer stay with the company and the calculative role with a more inferred loyalty function. The expressions that were not connected to loyalty is the attracting function.

The limitations of our qualitative study include the small sample size, and it represents only one kind of industry and one company.

The first contribution of this study is the new perspective of customer clubs in the telecommunications industry on customer relationships. The implication is that customers do not always consider all parts of the club when they stay loyal, and not always think about it when they plan future behaviour.The second contribution is the result regarding re‐consideration of the frequency concept. Bearing in mind the delimitations, the calculative role dominated the affective role. Thirty‐three of the 44 members said that their club was of minor importance in terms of relationship continuation. The calculative role is, accordingly, dominant.

Companies in the telecom industry – and in many other consumer markets – have introduced customer or loyalty clubs over a number of years. Customer clubs have been used as a loyalty‐building measure following the deregulation of telecom markets in Europe. They were introduced as a strategic instrument intended to foster customer retention and to contribute to increased sales and profitability. These clubs are the most recognizable part of many CRM strategies. Their short‐ and long‐term effects on loyalty are not obvious, however. The aim of this article is to explore the effects of the customer club on customer relationships in telecommunications by presenting results from two qualitative studies, which are quantified and reported in terms of responses to the club. The results of this empirical study in a Swedish telecom company reveal that the majority of customer‐club members do not perceive their membership as adding value or contributing to higher commitment and improved loyalty. Nevertheless, there are differences between non‐members and members regarding their perceptions of the service provider. The target group of club members has significantly higher satisfaction with the company than the non‐member customers.