BUYER BEHAVIOUR

POST PURCHASE BEHAVIOUR

Word count: 1,900

According to Blackwell, M & E (2006, P4), Buyer behaviour can be defined as “Activities people undertake when obtaining, consuming and disposing of products and services”
In this essay, I will be focusing specifically on “Post purchase behaviour”, in which I’ll be discussing and evaluating if customers that are satisfied with a supplier and/or their offering will become loyal?
According to Giese and Cote (2000), Customer Satisfaction is defined as “A summary affective response of varying intensity with a time-specific point of determination and limited duration that is directed towards focal aspects of product acquisition and/or consumption” While Customer Loyalty is said to be “a deeply held commitment to re-buy or re-patronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same brand-set purchasing” (Oliver, 1999). However, there are two distinctive ways of describing loyalty; One being attitude, whereas different feelings create an individual’s overall attachment to a product, service, or organization (Hallowell, R, 1996). The other being behavioural, which include customer continuing to purchase services from the same supplier, increasing the scale and or scope of a relationship, or the act of recommendation without having an attachment to the product, service or organisation (Hallowell, R, 1996).
FIG 1.

Reicheld and Sasser (1990) argues that satisfaction leads to loyalty. Reicheld (1995) then goes on to say “the only meaningful measure of satisfaction is loyalty”. This is supported by the service profit chain concept, which establishes relationships between profitability, customer loyalty, and employee satisfaction, loyalty, and productivity (Heskett, J.L et al, 1994). Furthermore, the service profit chain shows that the profits made by a business and their revenue growth is due to the retention of customers and repeat business which is because of customer loyalty, but would be impossible to achieve this without direct influence from customer satisfaction. (See FIG 1.).
Reicheld and Sasser (1990) suggests that loyal customers enable firms to generate more profit over time because of reduced operating costs, increased purchases and increased profit margin. However, the service profit shows that it's impossible for a business to have customer loyalty without customers satisfaction. Therefore, this suggests that that a current customer who is totally satisfied with the services or product offered by an organisation will most likely become loyal (Bowen & Chen 2001, p.215).
Reicheld and Sasser (1995), goes on to say it cost 5 times more to win a new customer than to a retain an existing (loyal) customer. Reicheld and Sasser (1995) are indicating that if a business solely aims own satisfying their current customers, it will lead to customer loyalty, and it will save them money, as these loyal customers are more likely to spread positive word of mouth to potential customers, in return, the potential customers would come to try out the products/services offered by the organisation, but will have high expectations.
Moreover, current customers tend to influence the expectations of potential customers with whom they interact with, through word of mouth etc. Which leads to potential customers having expectations and perceptions of the business (Davis and Heineke, 1998). This is known as the subjective expectancy disconfirmation theory, whereas consumers enter into a consumption experience with predetermined cognitive expectations of a products performance (Babin & Harris 2012). It is also the difference between customer perceptions and expectation which equals customer satisfaction (Anderson, 1973). Hereby, if the customers' expectations is less than the actual perception of the business, this will lead to a positive disconfirmation (Oliver, 1997). This would lead to high customer satisfaction meaning performance is greater than or equal to the customer’s desired service level, that is, the service performs better or equal to that desired by the customer (Anderson, 1973). However, if the customers' expectations is more than the actual perception of the business, it will lead to a negative disconfirmation meaning the customer would be highly dissatisfied (Oliver, 1997). Nonetheless, Oliver (1999) introduces the loyalty ladder, in which he listed 4 steps that represents different types of customers based on their loyalty to a firm which include; 1. Cognitive loyalty: this is the 1st step of the ladder, when a customer buys based on the features the product has. 2. Affective loyalty: this is the 2nd step of the ladder, when a customer now buys because they like the product. 3. Conative loyalty: this is the 3rd step of the ladder, when a customer now gets committed into buying the product. 4. Action loyalty: This is the 4th step of the ladder, when a customer buys against all odds and they are completely loyal to the brand (Oliver, 1999). This suggest that the more satisfied a customer is with a particular the brand, the more loyalty they will pledge to that particular brand, as shown in the steps, in which customers at first have a cognitive type loyalty to the brand based on the features it has and the more they buy the product and are satisfied, the more they become loyal to the business till the finally reach the action loyalty stage and they become completely loyal to the brand. Therefore, it can be argued that a customer that is satisfied with its supplier or its offerings will become loyal.
However, it can be argued that customer satisfaction does not necessarily equal to customer loyalty (Bowen and Chen, 2001 p, 215). A research was carried out using the seven-point Likert scale to measure customer loyalty at a hotel, in which 7= tremendously satisfied, 4= satisfied and 1 = very dissatisfied. It showed that customers who chose 7, meaning they were tremendously satisfied, are much more likely to remain customers of an organization than those who are merely “satisfied” (Oliver, Rust, and Varki 1997). In addition, Jones and Sasser (1995) also carried out a research using Rank Xerox USA, in which they used a scale of 1 - 5 to measure customer satisfaction, whereas 1 = very dissatisfied, 4 = satisfied, and 5 = very satisfied. The end result showed that Customers giving Xerox 5’s were six times more likely to repurchase than those giving 4’s. Hence, this showed that high levels of satisfaction are necessary for true customer loyalty; suggesting that a satisfied customer does not necessarily mean that they will remain loyal to a business. Furthermore, Jones and Sasser (1995) suggests two loyalty conditions; one being spurious loyalty and the other being true loyalty. Spurious loyalty is when a customer re-purchase from a particular brand but are dissatisfied i.e. Some customers buy from Primark based on the cheap price of their products, however, they are not satisfied with the quality but due to financial constraints or affordability they are constrained to buying from Primark regularly. Hence, it could be argued that customers that are loyal are not necessarily satisfied with the product but re-buy from a business based on situational constraints or due to the services it provides. This is further argued in the SERVQUAL theory, as it is suggested that customers can be satisfied based on the value and quality of the service they are being provided. (Hence, a customer may not necessarily be satisfied with) in the SERVQUAL RATER scale theory which is used to determine whether a business is providing good quality services (Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry, 1988). It .This is because a customer can be loyal to the product but not loyal to the firm, therefore, they are more likely to switch to an alternative if they are not completely satisfied (Mittal and Lassar, 1998). For example, a customer can be satisfied with a brand but if another store opens up in the same location with similar products but at a cheaper price or better quality, the customer is more likely to switch due to better value provided. This suggests that a customer can have some sort of loyalty to a business, preferably a cognitive type of loyalty, in which they are temporarily satisfied based on the features i.e. an off-license shop may have a particular product a customer likes that is not available in other stores and due to this, a customer will buy this product continuously from that store. However, if they realise they could get the product from another store or find out its available at a store they like shopping at i.e. Tesco etc. They are most likely to switch to buying that product from the other store. Therefore, it can be argued that a customer that is satisfied with their supplier or their offering would become loyal.
In conclusion, The service profit chain establishes a connection between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, as it shows a loyal customer leads to growth in revenue and a high profitability ratio, in which it suggest that this is not possible for customers to be loyal without a customer being satisfied firstly. Hence, saying that a satisfied customer will become loyal. However, further research showed that customers that are satisfied with a supplier don't actually become loyal, as the research that Jones and Sasser (1995) carried out using Xerox USA showed that customers that were just satisfied were very unlikely to be loyal. Furthermore, This is because there are various alternative suppliers customers can go to, meaning customers just being satisfied with a supplier or their offerings is not enough for them to be loyal to that supplier. Furthermore, other factors comes into place for a customer to become loyal to a supplier than them just being merely satisfied by the offerings of a supplier. Therefore, I personally would say no, a customer that is satisfied with a supplier and/or their offering will not become loyal to a business. This is because, other factors such as Trust, corporate image, emotions, communication, security, switching costs, commitments etc. Comes into place before a customer actually becomes totally loyal to a certain supplier and its offerings (Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry, 1988).

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