Title: Online retail loyalty strategies

Authors: Richard W. Cuthbertson, Kerrie Bridson

Addresses: Said Business School, University of Oxford, Egrove Park, Oxford OX1 5NY, UK. ' Bowater School of Management and Marketing, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, Victoria 3125, Australia

Abstract: This paper investigates how e-tailers design and implement their loyalty marketing strategies. The majority of the research was carried out via interviews with directors or senior managers from multi-channel and pure-play online retailers from across the world, and supported by secondary research. The main finding is that the loyalty marketing strategy employed is dependent upon the fundamental structure of the retailer-customer relationship. Other findings indicate that the importance of new customer acquisition and customer retention (loyalty) online depends on how long the retailer has been operating online; customer loyalty is created by implementing actions throughout the firm, rather than just relying on isolated marketing actions; communications with the customer should be at a frequency relative to customer purchasing frequency; and successful e-tailing practices consists of continually measuring and modelling customer sales, satisfaction and value, both in terms of absolute figures and trends.

Keywords: online retailers; retail industry; loyalty strategies; loyalty marketing; internet; retailer-customer relationship; channel mix; consumers; e-tailing; marketing strategies; multi-channel marketing; e-loyalty; internet marketing; relationship marketing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJITM.2006.012042

International Journal of Information Technology and Management, 2006 Vol.5 No.4, pp.279 - 294

Published online: 12 Jan 2007 *

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