Building Store Loyalty Through Service Strategies

ABSTRACT

Customer service represents a key element of retail strategy for maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage, even during difficult economic times. Customers are becoming more demanding about the services they expect from retailers both online and in person. In light of the importance of customer service, we propose a framework to refine insights into several retail strategy components—such as availability of service personnel, responsiveness to customers, personalization, proactiveness, and loyalty programs. These insights may be useful to both practitioners and academics alike. Retail strategies should generally accommodate the specific retail format being used (e.g., physical store, physical and online, or pure online). Research propositions are presented along with related implications for practitioners.

KEYWORDS:

• Loyalty
• retail format
• customer service

Acknowledgments

All authors contributed equally to this manuscript, and the order of authorship is alphabetical. The authors appreciate the suggestions from Britt Hackmann, the special issue editor, and the anonymous reviewers.