Consumer loyalty: a critical analysis of approaches towards definition
Consumer loyalty is a key factor determining the ability of a brand to bring stable and long-term income to its owner. For this reason, firms pay great attention to the formation of customer loyalty. However, despite the widespread use of the term "loyalty" in the scientific and applied literature on marketing, there is no single definition of this term. At the same time, it is obvious that effective loyalty management is possible only if the firm clearly understands the essence of this phenomenon. Thus, it is of great importance to study existing approaches to understanding the nature of customer loyalty. The purpose of this work is to generalize the analysis of literary sources of foreign and domestic authors, revealing the essence of the concept of "consumer loyalty", its formation and significance in the implementation of the loyalty program. To achieve this goal, we conducted a review of the literature on the topic of consumer loyalty. The database of sources was formed from articles presented in the scientometric database Scopus (Scopus.com), as well as from articles in journals included in the core of the RSCI (the search was conducted on the database Elibrary.ru). In addition, additional articles from other Russian-language journals were included, corresponding to the subject. We used the method of unsystematic (descriptive) literature review. As part of the research, we used a general scientific method of analysis and synthesis. Tabular and graphical methods were used to represent and structure information. Our research of sources allowed us to distinguish the concepts of satisfaction, loyalty and engagement, as well as formulate the author's definition of loyalty, which can further serve as a theoretical basis for the development of loyalty management tools.
Kirillova, T. V., Zyk, E. A. (2023), “Consumer loyalty: a critical analysis of approaches towards definition”, Research Result. Business and Service Technologies, 9 (2), pp. 76-89, DOI: 10.18413/2408-9346-2023-9-2-0-7
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