Daily Research News Online no. 4581 - Ipsos Book Debunks Myths of Customer Loyalty

Ipsos Book Debunks Myths of Customer Loyalty

September 20 2005

'Virtually everything we have been told about the relationship between customer loyalty and financial outcomes is bunk' according to a new book by two US-based business strategists from Ipsos Loyalty.

In Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business and Proven Tactics That Really Work, Ipsos Loyalty Senior VP Timothy Keiningham and Chairman Emeritus Terry Vavra challenge the conventional wisdom on loyalty, claiming to 'debunk 53 accepted practices and offer tested strategies to set businesses back on track'. Major topics include management practices, loyalty programs, and profitability.

The links between customer loyalty and growth and profitability are 'far more complex than we have been led to believe' according to the authors. 'An improperly directed program can result in keeping the wrong customers and ironically deflating an organization's profitability' and the most popular maxims of customer retention can 'poison management practices and affect the bottom line'.

In their place, the book offers 'Seven Tested Strategies To Get Back On Track', including:

Don't manage for customer retention before you manage for customer selection,
Focus on customers' share of wallet - don't disregard those customers with current low shares; consumer polygamy is the rule these days, and
Satisfied and loyal employees can make a difference, but customer satisfaction and loyalty can and often does happen in the absence of employee satisfaction and loyalty.

Keiningham is Senior VP and Head of Consulting at Ipsos Loyalty, author of several related books and winner of best paper awards from the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Service Research. Vavra is Chairman Emeritus of Ipsos Loyalty, an educator and author of four titles including one of the first CRM books. Co-authors of the book are Lerzan Aksoy, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Ko� University in Istanbul, Turkey; and Henri Wallard, CEO of Ipsos.

Ipsos Loyalty is online at www.ipsosloyalty.com.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.