Loyalty Myths:Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business and Proven Tactics That Really Work

CEOs worldwide consistently cite customer loyalty as one of the most important strategic objectives for their firms. Companies spend literally billions of dollars every year in pursuit of increased loyalty from their customers. More than 40,000 books have been written proclaiming the virtues of customer loyalty and explaining how to achieve it.

But unfortunately, almost everything that businesspeople have been told about customer loyalty is just plain wrong. It wasn’t that there was some vast conspiracy to mislead managers about the role of customer loyalty in business performance. The simple truth is that most of the accepted wisdom about loyalty is based on questionable data, or on a faulty reading of good data.

In the real world of the marketplace, managing for customer loyalty does not pay off unless loyalty initiatives are focused on the right customers. And contrary to conventional thinking, not all customers become more valuable over time. Some do just the opposite: They actually cost the company profits over time.

In Loyalty Myths, business strategists Timothy L. Keiningham, Terry G. Vavra, Lerzan Aksoy, and Henri Wallard explore dozens of false assumptions about customer loyalty.

In this summary, you’ll learn the truth behind these loyalty myths, and you’ll come to understand the seven Loyalty Truths that will help your company profit by nurturing loyalty among the right customers.