An examination of moderator effects in the four-stage loyalty model

Oliver's 1997 four-stage loyalty model proposes that loyalty consists of belief, affect, intention, and action. Although this loyalty model has recently been subject to empirical examination, the issue of moderator variables has been largely neglected. This article fills that void by analyzing the moderating effects of selected personal and situational characteristics, using a sample of 888 customers of a large do-it-yourself retailer. The results of multi-group causal analysis suggest that these moderators exert an influence on the development of the different stages of the loyalty sequence. Specifically, age, income, education and expertise, price orientation, critical incident recovery, and loyalty card membership are found to be important moderators of the links in the four-stage loyalty model. Limitations of the study are outlined, and implications for both research and managerial practice are discussed

Customer Metrics and Their Impact on Financial Performance

The need to understand the relationships among customer metrics and profitability has never been more critical. These relationships are pivotal to tracking and justifying firms' marketing expenditures, which have come under increasing pressure. The objective of this paper is to integrate existing knowledge and research about the impact of customer metrics on firms' financial performance. We investigate both unobservable or perceptual customer metrics (e.g., customer satisfaction) and observable or behavioral metrics (e.g., customer retention and lifetime value). We begin with an overview of unobservable and observable metrics, showing how they have been measured and modeled in research. We next offer nine empirical generalizations about the linkages between perceptual and behavioral metrics and their impact on financial performance. We conclude the paper with future research challenges.customer satisfaction, service quality, customer lifetime value, customer retention, customer equity, profitability, firm value