Customer Loyalty in Retailing

A recent research report by the Aberdeen Group entitled "Responsive Customer Loyalty: Creating Customer Commitment in Retail" highlights some interesting statistics for best-in-class retailers. While there is no mention of the size of the sample nor the period of time in which the survey was taken, the results appear to be reasonable. Some of the key statistics are:

1. Best-in-class retailers report average year-over-year same store sales increase of 7.4%.
2. Best-in-class retailers report improved repeat customer orders by an average of 21.8%.
3. Retailers without a loyalty program have poor sales and customer retention results compared with retailers that operate a loyalty program.
4. Best-in-class retailers are over 300% more likely than average or laggard retailers to include coalition loyalty marketing initatives.
5. The survey results show that 51% of Best-in-class retailers use loyalty elements such as rewards.
6. Best-in-class retailers are five-times more likely to be tracking, storing and analyzing customer analytics.

The bottom line is that while there appears to be little loyalty in retailing, this study provides hope that with a little focused work retailers can create some level of customer loyalty.