Customer loyalty to food retailers in Northern Ireland: ‘devoted loyals’ or ‘promiscuous switchers’?

Abstract

Store loyalty is a major challenge for food retailers, and the food retail market in Northern Ireland has been subject to considerable change in the past decade. Although shoppers will often patronize many stores, they typically have a primary affiliation to a ‘main’ food store that captures the majority of their food purchases. This study uses a unique approach to segmenting customers into groups based on loyalty in terms of both the type of data used to generate a loyalty score and the data collection techniques used. Innovative projective techniques have been used alongside traditional questioning techniques to reveal ‘behavioural’ and ‘emotional’ loyalty indicators, and in doing so create a holistic measure of customer loyalty to a main food store, allowing customers to be segmented into groups based on loyalty. A paper‐based questionnaire was administered to 152 food shoppers from throughout Northern Ireland. Responses to traditional questioning formats and projective techniques (cartoon friends and mini case studies) were analysed and used to generate a loyalty score for each respondent. The first group of customers nearly always visit the same store, are willing to recommend the store to others and are less likely to switch to a competitor, even when offered an incentive to do so. They also rate the ‘hard’ attributes of this store highly. As a result of these characteristics, customers in this segment were termed ‘devoted loyals’. The second group of customers may occasionally use a different supermarket for food shopping, some would consider switching to a competitor if offered an incentive, and they rate ‘hard’ store attributes at a slightly lower level than the ‘devoted loyals’. Based on their group profile, these customers were assigned the title of ‘susceptibles’. The third group of customers are less willing to actively encourage friends and family to shop at a specific store. Many in this group did not consider their current store as their number one choice in the next few years. An incentive to switch to a competitor store is more likely to trigger a transfer of loyalty by this group. These customers were termed ‘promiscuous switchers’.

Using projective techniques to tap into consumers' feelings, perceptions and attitudes . . . getting an honest opinion

“…The techniques allowed interviewees to overcome some of the common social barriers that could otherwise have inhibited their expression of attitudes and behaviours, such as the barrier of the interviewee fearing their responses would be judged in a negative manner by the researcher. As a result, the methods employed in this study enabled a typology of consumer loyalty patterns to be developed which revealed both an emotional and a behavioural component related to loyalty, and three groups of consumers were identified with similar characteristics: –‘devoted loyals’, ‘susceptibles’ and ‘promiscuous switchers’ (Doherty and Nelson, 2008). This typology and the attributes that each connotes could not have been developed from the ‘normal’ or ‘traditional’ methods that are widely employed.…”

“…Marketers strive to understand consumers' feelings, perceptions, motives and attitudes that drive customer loyalty to a particular product, brand or retailer. An investigation into customer loyalty to food retailers in Northern Ireland (Doherty and Nelson, 2008) posed a methodological problem – namely how to delve beneath the surface to obtain a thorough understanding of the interviewees' satisfaction with their ‘main’ food retailer and to characterize the relationship between the customer and retailer.…”

“…In a recent study on food retail loyalty (Doherty and Nelson, 2008), a mixed method approach was adopted. To begin with, a short section recorded demographic details of 160 participants using a standard questionnaire format.…”

Building Store Equity: Role of Store Image, Consumer Satisfaction, and Store Loyalty in the Indian Retail Market

“…East et al (1998) have argued that store loyalty refers to a consumer's propensity of using a store. Consumer propensity is the consumer's attitude toward a retail store or their intentions to visit the store in appropriate circumstances (Doherty & Nelson, 2008). Knox and Denison (2000) have defined store loyalty to be the consumer's inclination for patronizing a particular retail store or chain over a time period.…”

Using scenarios to explore employee attitudes in retailing

“…They can also be used as a tool to help people think or act differently about a particular issue 4 (Evans, 1995) and, in the case of the Delphi method, even help to generate forecasts and manage complex problems (Linstone and Turoff, 1975). Indeed, scenarios have been used in retail research to not only explore consumer decision making in different retail contexts (Park et al, 2005;Doherty and Nelson, 2008) but also to investigate ethical issues such as fraudulent consumer behaviour (Wilkes, 1978). However, the use of scenarios appears to be less apparent in retail research which explores issues from the retailer's perspective.…”