Components of the consumer loyalty

As it was said previously, the conception of consumer loyalty appeared in 1980s. Despite the fact, that this concept is rather new, and consequently, there is a big amount of definitions of consumer loyalty phenomena now. Sä llberg (2004) gives some of the initial earliest definitions of consumer loyalty. They can be found in the table 1 (See appendix 1).

As it is obvious from that table, there is a variety of consumer loyalty definitions. In concordance to Sä llberg's (2004) point of view, all the six definitions are similar in case of purchasing. All the definitions agree in the fact, that consumer purchasing periodicity is high and consumers tend to keep on purchasing goods and services. Also some of the definitions distinguish factors, which refer to frequency of purchasing as remaining consumers, maintaining stable purchasing and purchasing periodicity. On the other hand, these definitions also have some differences (Sä llberg, 2004).

According to Dick and Basu (1994), there is one difference, which was not discussed by others - it is the attitude factor. In addition, there are some other differences about maintaining purchasing and purchasing periodicity. More concretely Sä llberg (2004) talk about that; he thinks, that from a company or firm standpoint, consumers’ maintaining purchasing and frequency of purchase are different. Besides that, as it is clear from the table, Kumar noted consumer loyalty to brand in 1992 and Mittal and Lassar suppose, that maintaining consumers are more relevant in 1998.

For instance, if we take a grocery store as an example, consumer may have loyalty either the store itself or a particular brand in the shop. Consequently, it is justified that consumers may have loyalty towards to brand or to products equally (Sä llberg, 2004). Apart from Sä llberg’s standpoint, Torres-Moraga and his partners’ (Torres-Moraga et al., 2008) write, that brand loyalty phenomena and product loyalty phenomena have to be examined in-depth. They infer that product is the first stage in the " evolution" towards fulfilling consumers' wants and preferences and brand is the second, and satisfaction and loyalty act as two levels of the consumers’ respond (Torres-Moraga et al., 2008).

Torres-Moraga et al. (2008) also found, that while carrying out the process of increasing consumer satisfaction and creating consumer loyalty, it is recommended to examine brand and product apart from each other. It concerns mostly innovative products, such as automobile and electronic industry, than traditional foods branch of industry. There are some positive cues including market pioneer work, first mover privileges, low-cost proactive novelty and industry redefinition. Contrariwise, there are also some negative comments about of neglecting the product as a primary phase, for example, waste of market possibilities or market leading role, high-cost novelty and brand improvement. (Torres-Moraga et al., 2008)

There are also some other definitions of consumer loyalty, which are not mentioned by Sä llberg (2004). According to Ball et al. (2004), consumer loyalty can be passive and active. Active loyalty is about WOM (word of mouth) and tendency to purchase. Passive loyalty is about not shifting even under worse conditions to another brand (Ball. et. al., 2004). Moreover, Oliver (Oliver et al., 1997) wrote about four phases of loyalty, which are the following: cognitive, affective (emotional), conative (volitional), and action loyalty. But these are not all the definitions, there is a big amount of studies about consumer loyalty, which suggest more views on loyalty phenomena. In the next part of a chapter, a behavior loyalty and attitude loyalty will be considered.