Exploring Factors That Influence Consumer Loyalty to Automobile Dealerships in New York

Core text in attitude courses. Explains theory and reasoned action model and then applies the model to various cases.

Attracting and keeping consumers’ loyalty in Fast Moving Consumer Goods segment became the main concern for all producing companies and retailers, too. Many marketing researchers argue that product or service quality perception is one of the key elements in brand loyalty building process. When talking about food market, one has to be aware that food consumption has direct impact on human health and, in that context, process of building brand loyalty for food brands is not possible, or it can be hard, if the product quality of food brands is not on the expected level and according to defined food quality standards. The goal of this paper was to understand aspects of connection between food product quality and brand loyalty process better and to explore how problems with negative quality inconsistency in different food categories can influence brand loyalty. An empirical research (on-line survey) was conducted to prove and explain the connection between food product quality and food brand loyalty. The research results shows that the main reasons for being loyal to a certain food brand or product are related mostly to positive brand experience, high and stabile product quality, and recognizable taste. In the context of these research results, it can be concluded that long term consumer satisfaction as a factor in food brand loyalty process depends on stabile product quality, so food manufacturers or food brand owners should be focused on preventing or minimizing the aspect of negative quality issues. Regarding research limitations, the study was conducted only on users from Croatian market; so broadening the survey to other markets should give a clearer view on the connection between food product quality and brand loyalty process.

Grounded theory was developed by Glaser and Strauss who believed that theory could emerge through qualitative data analysis. In grounded theory, the researcher uses multiple stages of collecting, refining, and categorizing the data. The researcher uses the strategies of the making constant comparisons and applying theoretical sampling to obtain a theory grounded in the data. The justification of this paper is to provide discussion on the validity of grounded theory and the constant comparative method as effective research strategies for educators. The qualitative design of grounded theory will be the focus of this paper, along with a discussion of the constant comparative method, issues related to trustworthiness, and limitations inherent in grounded theory methodology.

Abstract Many firms have invested substantial resources in customer retention strategies based on the premise that improving customer retention rates leads to significant increases in profits. However, the profitability is determined by four factors; industry retention rates, segmentation issues, components of long-term customer value, and ability to calculate long-term customer value. If these factors are not favourable, the pay offs may be lower than the costs of retention strategies. Using the factors, a case study illustrates how firms can evaluate when retention strategies are likely to pay off. In general, the strategies are appropriate when; industry retention levels are high, segments differ in value, components of long-term customer value are favourable and individual customer value can be determined.

The market leader in quality management, this text is built upon the strength and experience of well-known authors in the field. As a past president of the Decision Sciences Institute and examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige Award, Evans is able to integrate the framework and essential content of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria throughout the text. The principles of total quality, as reflected in the Baldrige Award, provide what the authors feel is the best overall synthesis of the concept of quality. This edition continues to provide a managerially oriented, integrated view with a blend of pertinent technical topics. All chapters have been updated to reflect the most current thinking in the profession.

Companies that want to improve their service quality should take a cue from manufacturing and focus on their own kind of scrap heap: customers who won't come back. Because that scrap heap can be every bit as costly as broken parts and misfit components, service company managers should strive to reduce it. They should aim for "zero defections"--keeping every customer they can profitably serve. As companies reduce customer defection rates, amazing things happen to their financials. Although the magnitude of the change varies by company and industry, the pattern holds: profits rise sharply. Reducing the defection rate just 5% generates 85% more profits in one bank's branch system, 50% more in an insurance brokerage, and 30% more in an auto-service chain. And when MBNA America, a Delaware-based credit card company, cut its 10% defection rate in half, profits rose a whopping 125%. But defection rates are not just a measure of service quality; they are also a guide for achieving it. By listening to the reasons why customers defect, managers learn exactly where the company is falling short and where to direct their resources. Staples, the stationery supplies retailer, uses feedback from customers to pinpoint products that are priced too high. That way, the company avoids expensive broad-brush promotions that pitch everything to everyone. Like any important change, managing for zero defections requires training and reinforcement. Great-West Life Assurance Company pays a 50% premium to group health-insurance brokers that hit customer-retention targets, and MBNA America gives bonuses to departments that hit theirs.

Purpose: This paper provides a selective annotated bibliography that summarises journal articles which have employed either the theory of reasoned action or the theory of planned behaviour to circumstances which are relevant to business activities. Design/methodology/approach: Searches were conducted on the EBSCO Host and ProQuest databases to identify papers that had used either the theory of reasoned action or theory of planned behaviour in their methodology. The bibliography was separated into three categories- financial decision making, strategic decision making, and professional decision making. Implications: The information presented in this paper is intended to assist and facilitate further research by broadening the awareness of the literature and providing examples of the application of the theory as it has been employed in prior research.

Purpose This paper seeks to apply the dynamic capability framework to explore why store managers within the same chain of restaurants perform differently. Specifically, this paper argues that knowledge resources and learning mechanisms are critical to the development of dynamic capabilities. Design/methodology/approach The approach takes the form of an empirical data analysis. Hypotheses are tested on 132 store managers in a leading fast‐food restaurant chain in Taiwan. Findings The findings indicate that dynamic capabilities increase store performance, and that both knowledge resources and learning mechanisms have a positive effect on dynamic capabilities. In addition, the effect of knowledge resources on dynamic capabilities is partially mediated by the type of learning mechanism. Practical implications Store managers must be able to develop dynamic capabilities if they are to deal with the rapidly changing environment they are facing. Knowledge resources and learning mechanisms both improve the development of dynamic capabilities. Originality/value This paper conceptualizes and empirically tests the relationships between knowledge resources, learning mechanisms, dynamic capabilities, and performance in the restaurants of a fast‐food chain. In addition, this paper investigates how dynamic capabilities work from a process perceptive by examining the mediation effect of the learning mechanisms.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate spill‐over effects from customer perceptions of trust in and satisfaction with a brand to customer evaluations of a retailer and, ultimately, repurchase intentions. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual model is developed and tested using structural equation modeling. Specifically, recent procedures for assessing direct and mediated effects are adoped. Findings The findings demonstrate that customer trust in and satisfaction with a retailer mediate the effects of brand trust and satisfaction on customer repurchase intentions. Research limitations/implications This research provides a preliminary examination of the relationship between brands, retailers, and consumers. The results suggest that halo effects exist between customer perceptions of brands and retailers. Future research could attempt to discern how this transference from brand to retailer occurs and replicate these findings in other industries or product types. Practical implications The findings suggest that managers must realize that perceptions of brands are transferred to the retailers that carry these products. However, in order for customers to return, a retailer must satisfy them and earn their trust, since the effects of brands are indirect. Originality/value This paper extends findings of transference in retail service settings by demonstrating that customer evaluations of brands can spill over and influence customer perceptions of a retailer.

This article presents managers with a framework for measuring the strength of a brand. It specifically examines ten sets of measures grouped into five categories: loyalty, perceived quality, associations, awareness, and market behavior. Employing these measures can be difficult and their results must be used carefully. However, they have the capacity to provide managers with a set of important and extremely useful measurement tools.

The thesis of this paper is that customer relationship management (CRM) works best for certain types of businesses, products and organisational structures. Beyond the environmental and organisational factors, success depends on a customer-focused strategy that is implemented by often re-engineering current customer interaction processes and sometimes designing entirely new processes. The keys to profit enhancement however are processes that maximise the opportunity for increasing customer-generated cash flows at every customer contact. This is done by invoking decision rules that recommend specific customer treatments at each contact. Customer segmentation and customer value scorecards (CVS) are discussed as key tools in understanding customers and identifying opportunities for increasing customer-generated cash flows. An example that discusses how the introduction of a CVS in a company resulted in the company embracing CRM is also presented. CRM does require managing customer interactions, but more importantly, to be successful, it requires senior executives to be involved in creating the environment, culture and processes that will help it succeed. Organisational readiness, careful planning, the deployment of the right analytic tools and technology, as well as flawless execution are all needed for CRM to provide significant bottom-line results.

Starr and Rubinson (1978) develop a model to establish the relationship between product demand and relative prices. The notion of relative prices motivates us to consider a situation in which a retailer would either charge the same retail price for all products if he adopts a ‘fixed’ pricing strategy or charge different prices for different products if he adopts a ‘variable’ pricing strategy. In this paper, we develop a base model with deterministic demand that is intended to examine how a retailer should jointly determine the order quantity and the retail price of two substitutable products under the fixed and variable pricing strategies. Our analysis indicates that the optimal retail price under the variable pricing strategy is equal to the optimal retail price under the fixed pricing strategy plus or minus an adjustment term. This adjustment term depends on product substitutability and price sensitivity. We also present two different extensions of our base model. In the first extension, our analysis indicates that the underlying structure of the optimal retail price and order quantity is preserved when there is a limit on the total order quantity. The second extension deals with the issue of retail competition. Relative to the base case, we show that the underlying structure of the optimal retail price and order quantity is preserved in a duopolistic environment. Moreover, our analysis suggests that both retailers would adopt the variable pricing strategy at the equilibrium.

To review the advantages and disadvantages of e-questionnaires, and question whether or not reported disadvantages remain valid or can be limited or circumvented.The internet is likely to become the dominant medium for survey distribution, yet nurses and midwives have been slow to use online technology for research involving questionnaires. Relatively little is known about optimal methods of harnessing the internet's potential in health studies.A small e-questionnaire of health workers.The Medline and Maternity and Infant Care databases were searched for articles containing the words 'web', 'online', or 'internet' and 'survey' or 'questionnaire'. The search was restricted to articles in English published since 2000. The reference lists of retrieved articles were also searched.Reported disadvantages of online data collection, such as sample bias, psychometric distortions, 'technophobia' and lower response rates are discussed and challenged. The author reports her experience of conducting a survey with an e-questionnaire to contribute to the limited body of knowledge in this area, and suggests how to maximise the quantity and quality of responses to e-questionnaires.E-questionnaires offer the researcher an inexpensive, quick and convenient way to collect data. Many of the reported disadvantages of the medium are no longer valid. The science of conducting the perfect e-survey is emerging. However, the lessons learned in the author's study, together with other research, seem to suggest that satisfactory response rates and data quality can be achieved in a relatively short time if certain tactics are used.To get the best results from e-questionnaires, it is suggested that the questionnaire recipients should be targeted carefully and that the value of their potential contribution to the project should be emphasised. E-questionnaires should be convenient, quick and easy to access, and be set out in a way that encourages full and complete responses.

► Resolved, resolving and unresolved issues for qualitative sample design. ► Successful models for qualitative sampling for NIH quality research. ► Inferential issues: differences in qualitative quantitative sampling paradigms. ► Epistemology of qualitative sample size considerations.

Managing public-private partnership (PPP), particularly in the implementation phase, is both theoretically andpractically complex with success largely determined by how well partnerships are managed. Yet, several PPPscholars have noted that little is known about the management competency requirements to effectively managein a PPP settings; that is described as different from traditional hierarchical ‘command-and-control’ managementforms, and have called for further research to understand this ‘black box’. This research has provided awide-ranging account of the most significant ‘soft-management’ competency requirements to effectively mangein such a multi-organizational environment. It is suggested that PPP managers should be able to cope with, adaptto and be flexible to respond to changes that are frequent occurrences during the course of the partnership. Beingpatient and self-motivated were also qualities PPP managers should possess. Social and interpersonal skills,‘scoping in/out’ ability, conceptual skills, project management skills, and, communication and coordination skillswere also sets of skills important to effectively manage in a PPP settings. Further, PPP managers should alsohave sufficient technical and project management experience, as well as experience in negotiation and arbitration.PPP managers should be knowledgeable and qualified to manage the construction, operational and the financialaspects of the PPP project. They should also be familiar with, and use specialized programming and schedulingtechniques. The findings of this research were based on data collected from in-depth interviews with 21 partnermanagers in two case study organizations in Jordan.

Recent research in accounting advocates nonfinancial measures of company performance, such as customer satisfaction and loyalty, as useful indicators of aspects of firm performance. But what are the drivers of customer satisfaction and loyalty? We provide an integrated causal model of company performance in the personal computer (PC) industry that simultaneously tests links between product value attributes resulting from business process performance, customer loyalty, and financial outcomes. Our results extend prior accounting research (e.g., Banker et al. 2000; Ittner and Larcker 1998) in two directions: (1) by explaining the determinants of customer loyalty, and (2) by clarifying the relation between customer loyalty and measures of financial performance. We report that product value attributes directly and differentially impact levels of customer loyalty as well as prevailing average selling prices. Furthermore, measures of customer loyalty explain levels of relative revenue growth and profitability, and relatively high customer loyalty engenders a competitive advantage in the PC industry.

 Abstract—The last decade (2002 to 2012) has been quite remarkable for the Indian passenger car industry because during this period it made steady progress in all fronts, production, domestic sales and exports. The era also saw industry's gradual ascent to global power. India now is the sixth largest producer of cars and one of the fastest growing automobile markets in the world. It is home to almost all major global automobile brands, which together contribute more than three-fourths of total production and domestic sales. The achievement of Indian industry is even more significant because it came at a time when the world automobile industry was grappling with crises. The paper identifies the major factors behind India's spectacular success. India growth story was identified to be the key. Other important factors include global shift in automobile industry, favourable policies of Indian governments and positive role of supporting industries like auto components, financial sector etc.

Despite the proliferation of loyalty programs in a wide range of categories, there is little empirical research that focuses on the measurement of such programs. The key to measuring the influence of loyalty programs is that they operate as dynamic incentive schemes by providing benefits based on cumulative purchasing over time. As such, loyalty programs encourage consumers to shift from myopic or single-period decision making to dynamic or multiple-period decision making. In this study the author models customers' response to a loyalty program under the assumption that purchases represent the sequential choices of customers who are solving a dynamic optimization problem. The author estimates the theoretical model using a discrete-choice dynamic programming formulation. The author evaluates a specific loyalty program with data from an online merchant that specializes in grocery and drugstore items. Through simulation and policy experiments, it is possible to evaluate and compare the long-term effects of the loyalty program and other marketing instruments (e.g., e-mail coupons, fulfillment rates, shipping fees) on customer retention. Empirical results and policy experiments suggest that the loyalty program under study is successful in increasing annual purchasing for a substantial proportion of customers.

Mail surveys of small business owners have notoriously low response rates, creating the potential for substantial error in surveys of this population and diminishing the credibility of research conducted on small firms. The author recently carried out an experiment as part of a larger project involving 16,000 small business owner/members of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). The experiment's purpose was to ascertain survey treatments that might enhance mail survey response among small business owners. Results showed that none of the six treatments examined improved response rates enough to warrant its routine use over the alternative, nor did any combinations of treatments help. The implication is that commonly used treatments, for example prenotification, often are unproductive.

By considering the intense competitiveness and prevalent challenges in the current business environment, organizations can’t survive just focusing on attracting and capturing new customer but they have to choose the strategy that help in retaining the existing customers and enhanced their loyalty to the organization. So, in the customer service based industry, satisfied customers are no longer suitable, and the businesses have to explore the new ways to flourish and promote the loyalty of customers. The current study hypothesize that customer loyalty is significantly affected by the customer satisfaction and trust of the customers. Whereas, perceived value and service quality is important determinants to create the customer satisfaction and trust. The data was collected from different customers of various banks and the hypothesize links are tested. Results indicate that there is a significant relationship between customer satisfaction and trust with customer loyalty. It is also confirmed that service quality and perceived value are important antecedents of customer satisfaction and trust. The results present a comprehensive model in the financial sector to create and manage customer loyalty.

Customer Loyalty has been realized as a significant aspect in the establishment and maintenance of competitive edge in services sectors. Firm’s performance is positively affected with customer loyalty. Customer Loyalty not only increases the business value but they also allow it to uphold costs lower than those associated with attracting new customers. Now days, banking sectors are promoting Relational marketing which is beneficial for them to build long-term relationship with their customers. Empirical research of this paper examines the extent to which customer Satisfaction in accordance with Perceived Service quality and Trust, Switching Cost, Corporate Image, Customer Involvement Influence the Customer Loyalty in banking sector. For this analysis, Questionnaires were distributed among 150 people and data were collected from 148 questionnaires selected through non-probability sampling technique. Regression and Correlation techniques were used for the analysis of this study. Findings show that there is a direct positive and significant relationship between Customer Satisfaction together with Perceived Service Quality, Corporate Image, Customer involvement and Customer Loyalty. While, Switching Cost has a positive but insignificant relationship on Customer Loyalty.

CRM is a strategy that integrates the concepts of Knowledge Management, Data Mining, and Data Warehousing in order to support the organization's decision-making process to retain long-term and profitable relationships with its customers. In this paper, we first present the design implications that CRM poses to data warehousing, and then propose a robust multidimensional starter model that supports CRM analyses. We then present sample CRM queries, test our starter model using those queries and define two measures (% success ratio and CRM suitability ratio) by which CRM models can be evaluated. We finally introduce a preliminary heuristic for designing data warehouses to support CRM analyses. Our study shows that our starter model can be used to analyze various profitability analyses such as customer profitability analysis, market profitability analysis, product profitability analysis, and channel profitability analysis.

The more a marketing paradigm evolves, the more long-term relationship with customers gains its importance. Also, the move towards a customer-centred approach to marketing, coupled with the increasing availability of customer transaction data, has led to an interest in understanding and estimating customer lifetime value (CLV). There are several researches about the CLV formulas and calculating relations. But the effect of the CLV on the other departments of the organization and especially the effect of the CLV on the key parameters for organization’s profitability such as customer loyalty and satisfaction had little attention. This research is about these shortcomings and covers another essential element for organizational sustainable profitability, customer loyalty. The main purpose of this research is to demonstrate the effect of customer loyalty on the customer lifetime value.

Delphi Groups are an increasingly popular method, not least because electronic communications have made it easier to assemble a ‘virtual’ expert panel, but there have been a number of review articles which have pointed to a lack of rigour. Using an extended case study of a Delphi Group designed to establish agreed policy recommendations and deriving from a project using observational and semi-structured interview methods, this article examines the value of Delphi Groups as part of a mixed method research design. The article includes a narrative of the sequence of events in the Delphi Group’s deliberations, a detailed examination of how the group process led to the modification of one draft policy recommendation, a further examination of a contested additional policy recommendation, and a list of pragmatic recommendations on the conduct of Delphi Groups in respect of size, composition, recruitment, contestation, timing, closure and scope.

Customer loyalty plays a crucial role in firms performance. Over the last three decades the antecedents of customer loyalty in the service sector have attracted great interest by academics and practitioners alike. This study has two key objectives. First, we investigate how image perceptions, service quality and customer satisfaction contribute to customer loyalty. The results show that the organizational image customers hold of the service provider and perceived service quality have a similarly strong relationship with customer loyalty. Moreover, both, service quality and organizational image are significantly and positively correlated with customer satisfaction. The findings highlight that it is in particular through the formation of customer satisfaction that service quality and organizational impact customer loyalty. Thus, we can demonstrate that customer satisfaction has a mediating effect between external and interactive marketing initiatives and the development of customer loyalty. Second, we investigate the role of switching costs in the development of customer loyalty. The findings indicate that perceived switching costs, here assessed in terms of price sensitivity, have by far the strongest, positive and direct impact on customer loyalty in comparison to the other antecedents included in the model. The importance of switching costs is further corroborated with the finding that switching costs moderate the link between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Customer satisfaction and loyalty is a well known and established concept in several areas like marketing, consumer research, economic psychology, welfare-economics, and economics. And has long been a topic of high interest in both academia and practice. The aim of the study was to investigate whether customer satisfaction is an indicator of customer loyalty. The findings of the study supported the contention that strong relationship exist between customer satisfaction and loyalty. However, customer satisfaction alone cannot achieve the objective of creating a loyal customer base. Some researchers also argued, that customer satisfaction and loyalty are not directly correlated, particularly in competitive business environments because there is a big difference between satisfaction, which is a passive customer condition, and loyalty, which is an active or proactive relationship with the organization.

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to evaluate the significance of innovation driven online entrepreneurship as well as the impact of innovation on brand trust, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty in the extent of service innovations.Global online entrepreneurship was explored on a theoretical basis and correlation and regression analyses were used in order to evaluate the impact of the innovations of Google on brand trust, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Furthermore correlation and regression analyses were used in order to find out the relationship between brand loyalty and brand trust and the relationship between brand loyalty and customer relationship in the extent of service industry. The results show a direct and positive relationship between innovation and brand loyalty, a direct and positive relationship between innovation and brand trust and a direct and positive relationship between innovation and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, according to the research findings brand trust and customer satisfaction have a direct and positive relationship with brand loyalty. This research is limited to Google users since it is the most popular search engine worldwide. In this article the impact of innovation on brand trust, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty was evaluated. For future research the impact of innovation on other variables of brand loyalty can be studied.The findings of this study inform the readers about the impact of brand trust, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty on innovation in the extent of service innovations driven by global online entrepreneurship.

Many qualitative researchers are faced with the everlasting question of generalizability of their findings, especially when trying to support their research in front of quantitative researchers. Despite this state of affairs qualitative researchers rarely discuss generalizability of their data and argue that a deeper understanding of the phenomena is the goal of their endeavour and not statistical generalization. Furthermore, quantitative researchers usually dismiss the results of qualitative research based on the lack of generalizability. I argue that this state of affairs is a crude simplification of reality based on either a misconception about what qualitative data is or on a misconception of the aspects of qualitative data analysis that lead to generalizability like: the purpose of the research, the sampling method, the data analysis method and the coding strategy. The paper suggests that discussions on generalizability should become the standard for reporting qualitative report if the research question is phrased to demand a general answer.

Remaining relevant to customers and retaining customers who could consider booking online, requires travel agents to modify their marketing strategies. Travel agents need to find new ways to add value for customers and suppliers to reinstate their roles in the travel distribution process and ultimately retain their customers. A total of 600 travel agencies in South Africa participated in the study through the completion of an online survey. The data analysis technique used for the study was path analysis. The findings stipulate that travel agency owners and managers believe that providing differentiated products to their leisure customers, is the key to winning back lost customers and keeping existing customers. Travel agency owners and managers further indicated that this is an existing reintermediation strategy that they plan to practise in the future as well. It is therefore recommended that travel agents focus on delivering high-quality service to win back lost customers and thus reintermediate their businesses.

Faced with a sluggish economy, car sales have been disappointing in recent years. Given this situation, it is critical that dealerships shift the focus of their sales and marketing activities from attracting new customers to keeping the customers they already have. This move can be expected not only to reduce sales costs, but also contribute to healthy profits.

INTRODUCTIONSmall to Medium sized Enterprises or SME is a part of economy protection in a country, including Indonesia. SME has an important role to improve economy development pace, enlarge job opening, improve domestic income and strengthen community empowering. Right now, SME in Indonesia represents about 90 percent of Indonesia's business and contribute about 57 percent of Bruto Domestic Product in Indonesia.Economy crises in 1998 proved that SME is much tougher compared with larger industries and has higher rate of flexibility, uses local material and able to survive in economy crises. In 2015, ASEAN Economy Era will be applied and it will not only become an opportunity but also challenge for Indonesia's economy. By applying ASEAN Economy Community in the end of 2015, ASEAN members will have experienced the flow of goods, services, investment and well educated person from and to each country. By performing this kind of activity there will be solid integration called as free trade area, the omission of tariff rate among ASEAN members, labor and capital market. These will influence on stronger competition of SME's product especially in creative industries in Indonesia. One creative industry in Indonesia that becomes unique feature is batik.Batik is an artistic creation and local heritage in Indonesia. Batik is well known throughout the world. Batik is unique feature acknowledged by UNESCO as Intangible World Heritage in October 2009, besides kris and puppet. Batik has made Indonesia as one of the leader countries to produce the soft traditional fabric, origins from the old, artistic and rich tradition in Indonesia. One area in Indonesia that is well known as batik central is Pekalongan (Meutia, 2012).Marketing development in facing globalization era becomes certain challenge for SME in developing its business. It needs innovative development and creativity to be able to survive and face the competition from foreign SME. SME needs to be more creative in producing products, and adapting with business environment change in Indonesia to keep marketing performance in line.High rate of adaptive ability in business environment change and innovative creativity will become the strength that has to be owned by SME to face competition. Entrepreneur ability in adapting with business environment change will become internal resource that is imperfectly imitated by other company, and it will create competitive advantage in an organization. Krajewski & Ritzman (2003) stated that managing ability and adaptability will create competitive advantage oriented strategy.Besides adaptability factor, innovative creativity also becomes one of the triggers to create SME's marketing performance. Formerly, innovation term can be meant as a new product related breakthrough. As the development goes on, innovation term also includes the application of new ideas and process. Innovation also viewed as organization's mechanism in adapting with dynamic environment. Innovative creativity is a strategy to put an organization one step ahead in competing with same field products from competitors.Entrepreneurs' incompetence to maintain and preserve challenges will make performance declining and company's failure (Hill and McGowan, 1999). Study on marketing performance done by Menon et al. (1999) stated that marketing program creativity does not deeply influence marketing activities. Other stated that creativity provides important influence on marketing performance since it will be useful to develop certain product (Menon et al., 1999). Other study recommended that in developing countries, environment adaptability has an important role for performance improvement. Based on some previous results, problem for this study is to know and further analyze the influence of competitive pressure on business environment adaptability and innovative creativity to improve marketing performance.HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENTThe Influence of Competitive Pressure on BusinessBusiness change and competitive pressure push entrepreneurs to keep their business stable. …

Aims: The main purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influencing consumersloyalty in Malaysian hypermarkets context. Study Design: A total of 292 respondents were selected randomly who purcha sed products from hypermarkets. Data were examined using descriptive frequency, correlations, principal component and exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), measurement model, structural model and hypothesized path coefficient. Place and Duration of Study:Data was collected from Malaysian hypermarkets (Giant, Tesco and Carrefour) in federal territory area in Kuala Lumpur, between February and April 2013. Methodology: A self-administered questionnaire was developed to colle ct information through random sampling method. The study employs structural equation modeling (SEM) approach using confirmatory factor analysis and test the hypothesized positive correlation between exogenous and endogenous constructs to identify the custo mersloyalty.

Abstract This study aims to identify the factors that make passengers loyal to an airline in Southern Africa by investigating the impact of service quality and safety perception on customer satisfaction and how satisfaction and frequent flyer programs (FFP) subsequently influence customer loyalty. The key finding was that service quality positively influenced customer satisfaction, and satisfaction was an important antecedent of customer loyalty. The analysis also suggested that safety perception and FFP positively influence customer loyalty, while their relationship with satisfaction was not significant. An analysis of switching behaviour revealed that satisfied customers may still switch to other airlines. The main contribution of this study is the development of a customer loyalty model for the aviation industry in Southern Africa. Knowledge of customer loyalty drivers will assist airline marketing managers in developing strategies for improving passenger load factors and profitability.

There are a number of theories and models that have been employed over the years in understanding and studying users' technology adoption behaviors. These theories and models focus on people's intention to engage in a certain behavior such as the adoption and use of new technologies. The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) is one of such theories that have been widely used in technology adoption as well as used in a number of other research fields as a foundation to such studies. Most of the Information Systems scholars, who have used this theory, have used only to set a foundation or help build other theories and models. TRA has therefore been compared with other theories and models for technological innovation, and found to be a strong theory for innovation adoption upon a few additions of other variables such as facilitating conditions, awareness of innovation by users, social pressure and user readiness.

As the market is becoming more competitive, managers and marketers are becoming more aware of the importance of being a customer-oriented company to survive, and in this regard, customer loyalty is one of the major outcome of customer-oriented approach. Moreover, shifting the concept of marketing exchange from transactions to relationship emphasizes the importance of building customer loyalty. Therefore, nowadays, marketers are in the quest to obtain knowledge on how to build customer loyalty. However, most of the previous studies focused on business to customer (B2C) context. Due to several differences between B2C and B2B, there is a need to investigate the antecedents of customer loyalty separately from B2C. Therefore, this study focused on the Malaysian retail sector. The obtained results supported a positive influence of each of four adopted constructs, which represented by service quality, corporate image, customer trust, and customer switching cost, on customer loyalty. In light of the findings, several managerial implications were highlighted.

This study investigates the mediating effect of loyalty program membership on the relationship between advertising effectiveness and attitudinal loyalty as well as behavioral loyalty. Data from customers of a retail chain (members and non-members of the loyalty program), are used to test two models that are based on the quality-value-loyalty chain. Findings reveal that for customers who are not members of the loyalty program, advertising effectiveness does not significantly affect either attitudinal loyalty or behavioral loyalty. However, advertising effectiveness affects attitudinal loyalty of members of the loyalty program. Loyalty program membership mediates the relationship between advertising effectiveness and attitudinal loyalty.

The article examines the main theoretical and methodical approaches to the organization’s competitive strategy development. It is noted that comprehensive improvement of the competitiveness level, first of all, on the basis of the creation and development of sustainable competitive advantages is the most urgent for domestic organizations. The catalyzer of such a process is the formation of own competitive strategy as a conscious selection of the ways to achieve advantages under the conditions of competitive environment. Such a problem is especially urgent for domestic organizations, which operate in retail, as insufficient level of competitiveness is a considerable obstacle in the improvement of the activity efficiency. On the basis of the critical analysis of different theoretical concepts we have classified organization’s competitive strategies and revealed that organization’s competitive strategy development should be implemented on the basis of organization’s key strategy. We have also identified organization’s competitive strategy development principles, which determine the intensity of competition and the formation of the competitive climate. We have defined the necessity of substantiating the concept and developing the technique of organization’s competitive strategy formation in order to improve the efficiency of functioning of domestic organizations in the competitive environment, which, in its turn, would promote growth of the national economy potential in general. Keywords: competitive strategy, competitive advantage, competitive environment, competitive climate. JEL Classifications: L20, L22, D23, M12

The use of celebrity endorsements in advertising has become a trend and a perceived winning formula of corporate image building and product marketing. As existing media get increasingly cluttered, the need to stand out has become paramount and celebrities have proved to be the ideal way to ensure brand prominence. Research has shown that the use of celebrity endorsers brings many positive effects in terms of positive feelings towards the ad and the brand, a positive brand attitude and increased purchase intention for the brand. Numerous researches have proved empirically the effectiveness and the positive influence of celebrity endorsements in advertising, particularly on purchase intention. However, there is no common consensus on whether attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise of the celebrity endorsers have a significant impact on consumers’ purchase intention. Through a survey of 336 Indian respondents who are exposed to celebrity endorsements for various products/brands, the present study attempts to find out the impact of celebrity endorsements on consumers’ purchase intention. The three-dimensional scale proposed by Roobina Ohanian (1990) has been used for the purpose. Thus, the present study considers three attributes of celebrity endorsements as suggested by Ohanian - attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise. The study also attempts to find out the individual impact of these dimensions on consumers’ purchase intention. Exploratory factor analysis was used to reconfirm the factor structure. The model used was empirically tested for unidimensionality, reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity, using confirmatory factor analysis. Structural equation modeling was used to find out the impact of celebrity endorsements on purchase intention. Results reveal that celebrity endorsements have a significant impact on consumers’ purchase intention. However, the beta coefficients reveal a low degree of correlation between celebrity endorsements and purchase intention. Further, attractiveness and trustworthiness are found to have a significant impact on the purchase intention, while expertise did not have a significant impact on purchase intention.

This paper answers two key research questions regarding the relationship between product quality and service quality on customer satisfaction and the relationship between customers’ satisfaction and customers’ intention to switch brands.

The dynamic nature and the intense competition in the airline industry result in a need to craft innovative mechanisms that enforce customer loyalty. The study focuses on the mediating effect of passenger satisfaction on the relationship between loyalty programmes and passenger loyalty in the airline industry. The study complements previous research by producing evidence on customer loyalty in the airline industry in a developing country context. The regression findings confirm the hypothetical prediction that customer satisfaction mediates the relationship between loyalty programmes and customer loyalty. The results reveal that customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty and that loyalty programmes positively impact customer satisfaction. The findings have implications for managers of airlines fling routes in Southern Africa who are encouraged to invest in loyalty programmes in order to enforce passenger satisfaction and loyalty. Although previous research has examined customer loyalty and its antecedents, the mediating role played by customer satisfaction on the relationship between customer loyalty programmes and customer loyalty remains to be further investigated particularly in the context of the airline industry in Southern Africa.