Is Customer Club a Useful Tool in Creating Customer Loyalty : A Case Study of Stadium

Abstract: Introduction: Creating a relationship between the customer and the organization has come to be of great importance during the last decade. Companies are realizing that loyal customers are coming back and are not only increasing sales through repeat purchase, but is also decreasing the cost of obtaining new customers which exceeds by far the cost of retaining old ones. One tool used by companies to keep customers loyal is loyalty programmes, one example being customer clubs. As other loyalty activities the customer clubs main objective is to build long-term relationships with the customers. Purpose: During the recent years the numbers of customer clubs has increased dramatically and something that was looked upon as unique and a “new” approach to gain customer loyalty is today found everywhere, in every industry. With the notion that customer clubs are today more of a standard feature than something exclusive, led us to the purpose of this thesis, to draw conclusions on if Stadium’s customer club, the Stadium Card, is a useful tool in creating customer loyalty. Method: By conducting a survey among Stadium’s customers our focal point was quantitative, but we also wanted to interview the manager of Stadium’s club card, which would give us some depth and perspective of loyalty and customer clubs, a qualitative study. Conclusion: To answer our purpose we can conclude that there is clear evidence that Stadium builds a stronger relationship with members with Stadium Card than with non-members. With our limited research we can not draw any conclusion on whether Stadium’s customer club actually generates customer loyalty. We can see that customers that are holders of Stadium Card are more loyal but we can not see if Stadium Card is the true cause behind this. Do members become more loyal after joining the customer club or do they join the customer club because they are loyal? Even if it is uncertain if Stadium’s customer club creates loyalty there are strong evidence that the club keeps loyal customers loyal.