Multi-Loyalty Research

As the market competition intensifies and science and technology advances, the differentiation is decreasing and homogenization is increasing in similar products and services. At the same time, new products and brands are full of the market environment and changing the customer behavior. No matter what choice brands and stores, more customers gradually evolve as multi-loyalty from uni-loyalty. The multi-loyalty not only is a ubiquitous phenomenon but also accord with the life cycle of loyalty. Though a few researchers have discussed multi-brand loyalty and multi-store patronage, their studies were from a single perspective, for example behavioral dimension or attitudinal dimension. This is clearly contrary to all unanimously respected loyalty should include behavioral and attitudinal dimensions, so this gap becomes the major shortcoming of multi-loyalty research. Accordingly, if we want really understand the mechanism of multi-loyalty, both dimensions must be considered in our research.Be consistent with these thought, this study will follow four issues of research. (1) Combining behavior and attitude dimension to study customer loyalty, is there really multi-loyalty? (2)Are multi-loyal customers who loyal to same several brands/stores same degree of loyalty? (3) What are differentiations between multi-loyal and uni-loyal customers categorized by both behavioral and attitudinal dimension? (4) What are the external and internal reasons to result in multi-loyalty behavior?First of all, based on behavior learning theory and cognitive dissonance theory, this study redefines multi-loyalty including behavioral and attitudinal loyalty. Multi-loyal, uni-loyal and non-loyal customers were categorized according with Baldinger and Rubinson's measurement. The data of customers' behavioral and attitudinal choices of restaurants were collected through diary study. The findings suggested multi-loyalty does exit and is very common. As the types of behavior and attitude are much diversified, the degrees of loyalty are different among the multi-loyal customers who are loyal to same restaurants.Secondly, based on the first study, further extensive study was conducted. Except the diary data, the same subjects(N=215) were surveyed again and data of the antecedent(satisfaction, trust, perceived value, perceived risk and commitment) and consequent(word of mouth and price sensitivity) variables of customer loyalty were collected. The differences in the coefficients (antecedent/consequent and loyalty) across multi-loyal and uni-loyal groups were examined through multiple groups SEM analysis. Results indicate that multi-loyal groups' trust, perceived value, commitment are smaller than uni-loyal groups' and perceived risk, price sensitivity, WOM are larger than uni-loyal groups' significantly. Satisfaction of both is not different.Lastly, the external and internal reasons resulted in multi-loyalty were explored. The authors collected some statistics data from the State Statistics Bureau and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. On the basis of optimum stimulation level theory, the external reasons including competition and homogenization and internal reasons including customer's perceived competence and differentiation were analyzed to explain exploratory tendencies in consumer behavior. The conclusion is valuable to explore and interpret multi-loyalty behavior.The academic contributions of this study denoted as follows: (1) Redefining multi-loyalty on bases of behavior learning theory and cognitive dissonance theory from both behavioral and attitudinal perspectives and perfecting the relative multi-loyalty researches. (2) Categorizing customers into multi-loyal, uni-loyal and non-loyal groups, which provided a new perspective for classification of customer loyalty. (3) Comparing the different consumer behavior between multi-loyal and uni-loyal segments and supplying a new segmenting tool. (4) Exploring the external and internal reasons of multi-loyalty according to optimum stimulation level theory to explain the true mechanism. At the same time, this study also has some practical implications. The conclusions are not only beneficial for company to identify and segment customers but also valuable suggests for company to carry out diversified CRM and strategic alliances.