Since companies have realised the importance of customer loyalty and since the service sector has gained higher significance in recent years, we found it interesting to study what leads to customer loyalty in service companies. The theories we have chosen to consider are customer loyalty, service quality, service guarantees, affinity marketing, loyalty programmes and customer clubs, the customer in focus and other factors that influences customer loyalty. To find out how service companies are working with cus- tomer loyalty, we have conducted a case study within three service companies. Our findings are that customer loyalty has a significant importance for the companies we studied. Quality and personnel were the factors we found had the greatest impact in service companies concerning customer loyalty.

Title: The impact of service quality on customer loyalty - when a service changes from being free to become surcharged Authors: Carl Johan Olsson, Marcus Johansson and Victor Carlsson Supervisor: Hans LundbergCourse: Bachelor thesis in business administration, 15 Credits (15 ECTS) Keywords: Service quality, customer loyalty, price movementPurposeThe purpose of this essay is to increase the understanding if the perceived quality by the service users correlates with a future loyalty to a service when it cease from being free, to become charged.? Does the perceived quality of a service by the service users affect a future loyalty to a service, when it cease from being free, to become charged?MethodIn this essay we have chosen to implement a quantitative research method based on a survey. This choice was made in order to reach a sufficient large amount of service users and empirical data to answer our problem.ConclusionsAccording to the theory, customer satisfaction can be expressed through a comparison between customer?s expectations and the experience of using a service, and there are also positive correlations between service quality and customer satisfaction. Additionally, loyalty is based on service quality and customer satisfaction.

Several studies have examined the effects of perceived justice of preferential treatments to customers, but few have studied these effects when customers have different input. The purpose of the study is therefore to enhance the knowledge and understanding of the effects of preferential treatments to customers with varying input. More specifically, the study focuses on how perceived justice, customer satisfaction and loyalty are affected depending on the customer's input and received treatment. An experimental study with 263 respondents showed that the perceived justice and loyalty intentions among both the receiver and the non-receiver of the preferential treatment were of highest level when it was given to a customer with large input. Customer satisfaction however, was found to be of highest level when customers themselves received preferential treatment, regardless of the size of their input.

Title: Strategies for competition ? a study of the Swedish contact lenses market.Authors: Pernilla AArskog and Annika Lange.Background: As a market gets more mature and the competition increases, it is more important for a company to apply the right strategic perspective. There are four fundamental strategic perspectives for a service-oriented business: a core product-, a price-, an image- and a service perspective. This study is a about service management and take its point from the theories from the Nordic School about strategies for competition, customer value, Perceived customer quality and customer loyalty.Purpose: The main purpose with this study is to analyze and evaluate how the actors at the Swedish market of contact lenses should compete to gain further competitive advantages.Method: The study includes four qualitative interviews with two traditional opticians and two Internet based businesses, but also a survey with 106 contact lens users is included.Analysis: In the analyse part of this thesis it was concluded that the traditional opticians conception about their customer not agrees with what the customer evaluate as important. Many of the customers have thought about changing their optician, and besides that do not recommend their optician, and can there for not be categorize as loyal customers.

Several studies have examined the effects of perceived justice of preferential treatments to customers, but few have studied these effects when customers have different input. The purpose of the study is therefore to enhance the knowledge and understanding of the effects of preferential treatments to customers with varying input. More specifically, the study focuses on how perceived justice, customer satisfaction and loyalty are affected depending on the customer's input and received treatment. An experimental study with 263 respondents showed that the perceived justice and loyalty intentions among both the receiver and the non-receiver of the preferential treatment were of highest level when it was given to a customer with large input. Customer satisfaction however, was found to be of highest level when customers themselves received preferential treatment, regardless of the size of their input.

Several studies have examined the effects of perceived justice of preferential treatments to customers, but few have studied these effects when customers have different input. The purpose of the study is therefore to enhance the knowledge and understanding of the effects of preferential treatments to customers with varying input. More specifically, the study focuses on how perceived justice, customer satisfaction and loyalty are affected depending on the customer's input and received treatment. An experimental study with 263 respondents showed that the perceived justice and loyalty intentions among both the receiver and the non-receiver of the preferential treatment were of highest level when it was given to a customer with large input. Customer satisfaction however, was found to be of highest level when customers themselves received preferential treatment, regardless of the size of their input.

Title: Satisfaction and loyalty from a customer viewpoint Level: Final assignment for Master degree in Business Administration Authors: Thomas Blomqvist and Per Nilsson Supervisor: Lars-Torsten Eriksson Date: Januari 2010Purpose: The overall purpose of our paper is to describe Alfas customers based on the level of satisfaction and loyalty. We also want to find out if there are specific characteristics of customers with a high degree of satisfaction and loyalty.Method: We have used both secondary and primary data in the paper. We started with a review of relevant literature to seek knowledge in the field of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Thereafter we conducted a prestudy by interviewing three of Alfas employees, and finally we conducted a quantitative survey on Alfas customers. The results were analyzed and compared against current theory of customer satisfaction and customer loyaltyResults & conclusion: The results suggest that Alfa is successful in meeting customer expectations in service delivery, even if we can confirm differences in outcome between the three businessareas.

Purpose: The study aims to, from a companys point of view, describe how strategic work with customer loyalty is done.Conclusion: Another possible way to try to create loyalty is to exceed the expectations whether the customer is a member of the loyalty program or not. A strong brand with a good reputation can also contribute to a stronger loyalty. Reward systems gradually reward the customers since they first need to collect points, or in this case miles, to be able to use them later on. The staff is often educated in service to be able to interact with the customer in a professional manner. One way to interact with the members of the loyalty program is through profiles on the internet.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how customer oriented businesses can use loyalty programs to create loyalty and how loyalty can be increased. We have in this study chosen to refer loyalty program to the loyalty program that belong to the company Jula AB. Our study is written in a qualitative method. In our method, we chose to interview people in Jula organization to get a business perspective to our study. We have also chosen to assemble a focus group of Jula-club members to also get a customer perspective on the subject.

The cellular market is today suffering from great customer dissatisfaction. Simultaneously, the services offered by the different cellular providers are very homogenous, causing strict competition where various price strategies have been the main mean of battle. From a business perspective, implementing pricing strategies, to keep up with increased network investments, is a short term solution.In a market characterized by lacking customer satisfaction and harsh competition, research has shown the importance of highlighting customer relations in marketing. This type of marketing, which one could refer to as relationship marketing, is considered an efficient, economic, and strategic method of showing the importance of customer loyalty. To get insight in the relationship between the customers and the cellular providers, as well as to show the importance of relationship marketing, this study has used qualitative interviews to find what develops strong customer loyalty.The results showed that increased customer loyalty is achieved when an emotional bond is created.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect that price has on quality expectations and customer satisfaction and how price fits into a customer satisfaction model. An experiment in which participants are subject to scenarios of a high or low quality flight are used to test the hypotheses. The analysis shows that perceived quality has a bigger impact on satisfaction than price. Furthermore, price and quality do not affect customer satisfaction independently of each other. The importance of value compared to quality changes whether the actor is a high or low price actor.

The purpose of this study is to provide a longitudinal examination, within grocery retailing, of four marketing tools and their impact on enhancing customer loyalty. The study examines whether the relationship between the four marketing tools and customer satisfaction has a positive effect on attitude and behavior loyalty. The findings from this study show that the marketing tools have not helped enhancing loyalty between 2004 and 2007. Between these years, service quality has the most affect on loyalty. Self-scanning as an effective marketing tool could be questioned, the relation in this study is not supported.

Over the last couple of years the airline business has gone through some turbulent changes, which has meant that customer loyalty has been affected. It?s no longer certain how or why customers are loyal to an airline, although the companies now use more and more complicated loyalty programs to keep their customers.The purpose of this essay has therefore been to examine what makes customers loyal to a service business, and what is the extent of their loyalty.To be able to answer these questions, a survey about costumers loyalty were accomplished. The results we received show that availability is the most significant issue for customers of SAS, and satisfaction is the minimum requirement for the customer. But to be able to attract loyal customers the airline has to offer them more..

Banks find themselves at a highly competitive market where it is important to achieve high customer satisfaction if they want to attract customers and stay competitive. Some studies suggest that the gap between customer expectations and perception within the five quality dimensions influences the customer satisfaction. With SERVQUAL the authors of this thesis have investigated the suggested relationship and have discovered no indications of a relationship between the gap and customer satisfaction. Instead the results indicate that there is a relationship between perceived service and customer satisfaction. The thesis also indicates that the most important quality dimension for the bank customer is reliability.

The study examines selectivity of the customer base and scarcity of a product?s effect on attitude and value towards a product or service. A questionnaire study is made from three different situations. The result varied depending on the situation; however it was found that selectivity of the customer base and scarcity has a great impact on the attitude and the perceived value towards a product or service. Selectivity of the customer base was found having the highest level of impact on both attitude and perceived value.