Elina Närvänen, Hannu Kuusela, Heli Paavola and Noora Sirola
This paper's purpose is to develop a meaning-based framework for customer loyalty by examining how consumers make sense of customer loyalty through meanings and metaphors.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper's purpose is to develop a meaning-based framework for customer loyalty by examining how consumers make sense of customer loyalty through meanings and metaphors.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative study based on in-depth interviews and focus group data in the retail context was conducted with Finnish customers. The data were analysed with qualitative data analysis techniques such as the constant comparative technique.
Findings
The empirical findings comprise eight loyalty meanings characterised by two dimensions. The first dimension is reflexive vs. routinised, and the second dimension is private vs. social. The loyalty types are dimensionalised through four metaphors: loyalty as freedom of choice; as being conventional and binding; and as belongingness.
Practical implications
The findings improve the way customer loyalty currently is understood in the retail setting. The paper proposes that customer insight that utilises thick data can be used to grasp loyalty meanings. These data are rich in context and detail, and they take into account customers' everyday lives. Utilising thick data in the form of storytelling fuels customers' meaning-making related to customer loyalty, potentially enriching their relationship with the retailer.
Originality/value
Customer loyalty has been driven largely by a transactional and company-centric perspective. This article presents an alternative view of customer loyalty that accounts for the variety of meanings that customers may assign to their loyalty-related thoughts and behaviours.
Details
Keywords
Russell W. Belk, Kelly Tian and Heli Paavola
Purpose – We use data from the United States and Finland, a literature review, and historical analysis to understand the concept and role of cool within global consumer…
Abstract
Purpose – We use data from the United States and Finland, a literature review, and historical analysis to understand the concept and role of cool within global consumer culture.
Methodology/approach – This is a conceptual review and qualitative analysis of data from depth interviews, journals, and online discussion groups in two U.S. locations and one Finnish location.
Findings – Cool is a slang word connoting a certain style that involves masking and hiding emotions. As cool diffuses we find that it is both distilled and diluted. The concept itself has also evolved. What was once a low-profile means of survival and later a youthful rebellious alternative to class-based status systems has become commoditized.
Research limitations/implications – The study has been conducted in two cultures with a limited range of ages thought to be most susceptible to the appeal of being cool.
Practical limitations/implications – Marketers may not yet have exploited cool as effectively as they have exploited sex, but mainstream consumers now look for cool in the marketplace more than within themselves. The result is a continuous race to offer the next cool thing.
Originality/value of chapter – It is argued that coolness is a new status system largely replacing social class, especially among the young.
Susanne Becken and Jude Wilson
This paper aims to investigate weather sensitivity of tourism businesses in New Zealand to examine whether adaptive responses and “learning” about current weather can help…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate weather sensitivity of tourism businesses in New Zealand to examine whether adaptive responses and “learning” about current weather can help operators to prepare more proactively for future climatic changes.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on data from interviews with 57 tourism operators and stakeholders in three key tourist destinations in New Zealand. Data were content-analysed and coded into weather types, impacts and business responses.
Findings
This research found that tourism stakeholders were well aware of the specific weather conditions that caused business problems, and they had considerable knowledge and experience in responding to conditions effectively, even though the causal chain of weather conditions and direct and indirect tourism impacts was often quite complex. Importantly, operators were found to learn from previous experience and also from other agents at the destination. Thus, the research established that a collective process of “sense making” occurred in relation to managing the weather. A longer term perspective of future, and possibly more dramatic, climatic changes, was not taken however.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is limited to three case study destinations and is also subject to the usual limitations of qualitative research (including interviewee selection and coding). However, the research does indicate a great level of weather literacy which could be extended into adaptive capacity for climate change, if general awareness of climate change adaptation needs could be enhanced among operators.
Originality/value
This paper provides detailed insights into the weather sensitivity of tourism operators and stakeholders, and of their current ability to deal with various conditions and impacts. Their weather “sense” and weather responses provide a solid platform on which more explicit and planned climate change adaptation might be based.