What Can Shanghai Fashion Retailers Learn about Customer Loyalty from British Low and Middle Priced Fashion Retailers?

摘要

Loyalty is hardly achieved now. For clothing retailers, customer loyalty is even more difficult to get. Firstly, the competition in this area is fierce. Secondly, customers have so many choices, knowing more about products from the media, and they expect a great deal more from their suppliers. Thirdly, consumers today are far more mobile and willing to travel long distances to shopping; witness the success of large out-of-town shopping centre: Bluewater. Moreover, consumers have been conditioned to switch brands in response to discounts (Peppers and Rogers, 1999). In future, customer loyalty may be more and more difficult to gain, with the growth of anytime, anywhere net shopping. However, the importance and benefits of high customer loyalty are apparent. Consistently high customer retention can create tremendous competitive advantages, such as relatively low cost, more profit, positive word-ofmouth and so on. Therefore, many British low and middle priced fashion retailers have been carrying out several strategies that can help build loyalty in different ways. So in this paper, three methods, which are exercised by Bhs, Asda and NEXT respectively , were studied, namely, in the areas of loyalty scheme, everyday low price and multi-channel distribution systems in order to give Shanghai clothing retailers some enlightenments and suggestions to develop their performance.