Customer loyalty: a multiple case study in the Swedish chemical commodity market

Abstract: The marketing of today is increasingly shifting towards customer orientation, customer understanding and synergistic relationships. This shift has given new possibilities for companies operating in commodity markets to differentiate them selves and no longer be completely dependent on price. The commodity companies can rise above their commodity markets
and differentiate their commodity products. Customer loyalty is the factor that can make the relationship between two companies more stabile. A company has a unique advantage over the competitors if its customers want to stay with the company. The purpose of this thesis was to find out how
the determinants and moderators of customer loyalty can be characterised and described in a commodity market. A multiple case study has been performed by interviewing four customers of a Swedish chemical commodity
company. The factors describing and characterising customer perceived value, customer satisfaction and switching costs, all said to influence customer loyalty, and customer loyalty has been investigated. This study shows that the customer satisfaction perceived by the customers is influencing the customer loyalty. The customer satisfaction is in turn influenced by the customer value perceived. The switching costs only influence the satisfaction-loyalty linkage on this market if they are high.