I recently read an article “Not All Repeat Customers are the Same: Designing Effective Cross-Selling Promotion on the Basis of Attitudinal Loyalty and Habit” authored by Yuping Liu-Thompkins and Leona Tam in the September 2013 issue of Journal of Marketing. This article acknowledges that Loyalty is both attitudinal and behavioral in nature, yet also delves deeper into the behavior of ‘habit’. I am a quintessential creature of habit (or so I am told . . . I actually define myself as quite flexible) so I was drawn to this article and what insights it might have.
The authors state that Loyal customers driven by the attitude of commitment differ from Loyal customers driven by the behavior of habit. And due to these differences, distinct marketing approaches are appropriate. For example, cross selling to Loyal customers (based on strong commitment) is easier than cross selling to Loyal customers (based on habit).
While Customer experience surveys are great ways to determine attitudinal Loyalty, they often don’t measure “habit.” In this particular article, ‘habit’ considered past transactions while capturing the time, location, and other contextual dimensions. This quantification of ‘habit’ would allow for the two groups of Loyal customers to be targeted appropriately. We continue to hear about Big Data, and integrating information from all available sources. I think this is yet another example of an application.
