Abstract
Evidences show that existing customers tend to spend more money than new customers do. In highly competitive business environments, maintaining existing markets becomes more critical than developing new ones. Managing customer loyalty through product design, i.e., product loyalty issues, is a key to company prosperity and an important concern in design research. From product design and customers’ perspectives, this paper suggests an approach for exploring potential design strategies that can help to do so. Through various research methods, 25 basic loyalty strategies are defined and 19 of which are identified valid to college students groups characterized as rationalists. Major findings include: (1) For effective management, multiple strategies are necessary; (2) Valid loyalty strategies may vary in different product adoption phases and to various customer groups; (3) Two strategies - Unique appealing and Technological paradigm - might be viewed as core strategies; and (4) One loyalty strategy along is incapable of handling long-term customer loyalty.
Keywords
product design, design strategy, customer loyalty, product loyalty
Citation
Luh, D. (2004) Product Loyalty Study on College Students Consumer Groups., in Redmond, J., Durling, D. and de Bono, A (eds.), Futureground - DRS International Conference 2004, 17-21 November, Melbourne, Australia. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2004/researchpapers/27
Product Loyalty Study on College Students Consumer Groups.
Evidences show that existing customers tend to spend more money than new customers do. In highly competitive business environments, maintaining existing markets becomes more critical than developing new ones. Managing customer loyalty through product design, i.e., product loyalty issues, is a key to company prosperity and an important concern in design research. From product design and customers’ perspectives, this paper suggests an approach for exploring potential design strategies that can help to do so. Through various research methods, 25 basic loyalty strategies are defined and 19 of which are identified valid to college students groups characterized as rationalists. Major findings include: (1) For effective management, multiple strategies are necessary; (2) Valid loyalty strategies may vary in different product adoption phases and to various customer groups; (3) Two strategies - Unique appealing and Technological paradigm - might be viewed as core strategies; and (4) One loyalty strategy along is incapable of handling long-term customer loyalty.