How to Generate Store Loyalty? Exploring the Role of Preferential Treatment and Salesperson Trust: Mediating role of Commitment to Salesperson

Khalid Jamil,Muhammad Asghar Ali,Ahsan Zubair

doi:10.22610/imbr.v9i5.1959

Abstract

This article describes how much the importance and impact of preferential treatment by salespersons & customers-salespersons relationship & trust for store loyalty. Providing preferential treatment and customer trust to salesperson can be very useful for managers so that customers can be loyal. This long-term relationship helps retailers gain profits and survive in business. A questionnaire was used to collect data. Most of the data were collected from Faisalabad University students by using convenience sampling, but some of the respondents responsible for different spheres were also included in generalizability. A sufficient number of females have also been included according to the needs of the research. Both preferential treatment and trust in salesperson have a positive impact on the build-up of store loyalty. The results also that trust in the salesperson is more affecting the customer's commitment to the salesperson and thus creates loyal customers.

Highlights

Customer loyalty is essential for business survival Reichheld (1993)
Previous study has showed the importance of customers-salespersons relationship to be very effective in making the customers loyal towards the particular store
The finding of this study proven that the relationship between customers and salespersons is very critical to build store loyalty, providing the competitive edge in the competition

Summary

Introduction

Customer loyalty is essential for business survival Reichheld (1993). When the customers getting, something valuable, more than the products/services obtained, they are will consistently uphold a lifelong connection and alliance with that specific retail store, subsequently demonstrates loyalty. “Loyalty is shown when persons do not undermine others by what they say or do. A person who has undisclosed misgivings, yet still behaves supportively, is seen as loyal” (East, Gendall, Hammond, and Lomax, 2005). Customers’ views suggest that loyalty is a long term relationship commitment, it must be earned by the retailers and that it can’t be bought so . For enhancing the customers value most of the retailers are very much obliged to continually seek out products, processes and technologies (Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1988; Woodruff, 1997). Many researchers explore the different factors that can build customer loyalty through store brands Kremer and Viot (2012), the presence of other customers in retail store effect customer loyalty Soderlund (2011). Whereas our study will take an insight to how the customer loyalty can be built through the customer-salesperson relationship?

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Results

Conclusion