Introduction to the Handbook of Research on Customer Loyalty

Loyalty is important in both our personal lives and in our business relationships. On a personal level, loyalty is based on commitment and conscious allegiance, resulting in trust and a sense of companionship across a lifetime. In this introductory chapter we describe how this also extends to the business level by describing the four main themes of this Handbook of Research on Customer Loyalty. We start by offering an overview of the latest and research-driven insights on customer loyalty and we discuss the research methods, metrics and designs that can be used in studying customer loyalty. We then turn to loyalty programs and describe how these are developing as customer ecosystems to expand the scope of supplier-customer relationships through sales support and incentivization of business partners and customers, which also involve online education for professional advancement and development. We conclude by offering a number of future directions for research on customer loyalty moving forward.