Modi reaches China for BRICS summit
Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Xiamen, China, on Sunday to attend the BRICS summit, scheduled to begin on Monday, during which he would look forward to having “productive discussions” with leaders of the grouping to support the agenda for a stronger partnership. Also, Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to hold a bilateral meeting on September 5, nearly a week after India and China announced the resolution of the 73-day-long Doklam standoff.
While companies toil to gain undivided customer loyalty, customers have long displayed a propensity to exhibit divided loyalties towards brands — while purchasing even basic commodities. Most of the research on understanding customer loyalty has focused on the behavioural aspect. The simple rule is that repeated purchases of the same brand signal customer loyalty. However, this measure of loyalty suffers from a major deficiency — that of not being able to capture the divided loyalty attitudes of customers. It also hampers exploration of the crux of the problem: motivations behind the divided loyalty behaviours.
S Arunachalam, assistant professor of marketing at the Indian School of Business, says it is imperative to understand the motivations behind divided loyalty for two reasons: to gain deeper insights into customers’ loyalty attitude determinants; and to help companies gain managerial insights on understanding and handling divided-loyal customers to the company’s benefit. He says, “An understanding of customer loyalty begins with an understanding of customer motivation. Unless brands understand the motivations behind the divided loyal behaviours of customers, brands will struggle to create meaningful relationships or enduring engagements with customers.” The results of a study by Arunachalam and his colleague show firms must pay attention to divided-loyal customers as they form around 30 per cent of the customer pool. For firm-friendly results, firms could get dealers to intervene on their behalf and recommend products to end customers. The study also stresses that a customer-value oriented strategy is more effective than an incentive-reward strategy in motivating dealers to recommend a product to customers.