AUTHOR
Siegbahn, Caroline; Öman, Jenny

DATE
2003-06-06

DEPARTMENT
Business Administration and Social Sciences / Industrial marketing and e-commerce

SUMMARY
The increased competition of today, has forced companies to develop new marketing activities in order to differentiate from competition. Companies have realized the importance of creating and maintaining relationships with their customers in order to survive on the market, where a relatively new, and increasingly popular, concept concerning building relationship is loyalty schemes. The purpose of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of the role of the specific loyalty scheme customer clubs as a marketing activity within international companies. To reach our purpose we have explored and described the objectives of customer clubs, depicted specific characteristics pertaining to customer clubs, and finally investigated the marketing effects of customer clubs. One case study has been conducted on an international company within the airline industry in order to satisfy our stated purpose. Our study shows that the main objective for companies within the airline industry to utilize customer clubs is to identify their customers and gather information about them. Furthermore, we found certain characteristics were necessary in creating an effective and successful customer club. Finally, our study showed that the actual marketing effect customer clubs has was not necessarily the desired effect of customer retention rather the ability to create and maintain an accurate customer database.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--03/179--SE / NR 2003:179