The Success Of Chains: Customer Loyalty Or Customer Comfort?

Abstract

The quest to understand customer behaviour has led researchers down many interesting paths. Is it satisfaction with the product, a feeling of belonging, a basic need, or perhaps something more? The literature lends itself to many theories and constructs that try to pin point what makes the consumer tick. Generally the literature defines both physical and psychological aspects of the consumer, that can help better predict the behaviour of the market. The research leaves many questions: Does one rely on the other? Are we measuring too much? Or are we missing the main points? This paper will look at the psychological aspect of the literature in trying to develop the Consumer Comfort construct (Spake, Beatty, Brockman and Crutchfield 2003), and to identify the basic determinates needed to measure buyer behaviour.