@Risk

Showing just how strongly low prices drove consumer loyalty during the recession, Walmart dominates the newly released 2010 COLLOQUY Retail Loyalty Index.

Previously published in 2008, the COLLOQUY Retail Loyalty Index ranks the top retailers in the nation according to customer loyalty ratings. The 2010 index was built from a December 2009 survey of 3,500 U.S. consumers in five regions: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest and Northwest. Respondents were surveyed across four retail categories that included Grocery, Personal Care, Department Stores and Mass Merchants.

The results show that customers claimed the highest loyalty to Walmart in many of the Grocery, Personal Care and Department Store regional categories. Costco had the highest customer loyalty ratings in three out of five Mass Merchant regional categories. In COLLOQUY’s index from two years ago, shoppers claimed the most loyalty to Costco, which ranked first in nine out of twenty regional and retail categories. (more…)

After posting a few weeks ago about the lost art of long-term customer loyalty (new research suggests that one-third of the average CPG brand’s most loyal US consumers defected from the brand between 2007 and 2008), it was refreshing to read an opposing point of view in Betty Feng’s new blog post, “How Supply Chain Service Drives Customer’s Loyalty –My Customer Experience with Zappos.” (more…)

The editorial “Say No to Raw Cookie Dough,” in Monday’s New York Times, urges Congress to act quickly and approve a bill that would strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s powers, giving them both more money and more authority, including new clout to recall products and more easily review food safety records or consumer complaints. But –after the string of recent problems with tainted tomatoes, peanuts, pistachios, pot pies, beef, and now cookie dough –will the infusion of power and more than $1B contained in the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 be enough to overcome consumer skepticism?

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Ask any brand manager or retailer, and they’ll tell you: churn is nothing new. Still, many in the consumer packaged goods sector were surprised –alarmed, even –last week when they found out just how prevalent brand defection is these days. As remarkable as it sounds, newly released research shows that one-third of the average CPG brand’s most loyal US consumers defected from the brand between 2007 and 2008.

The new data comes from a two-year analysis conducted by Catalina Marketing’s Pointer Media Network and the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council. The study, titled “Losing Loyalty, The Consumer Defection Dilemma,” assessed 34 million US shoppers’ purchasing patterns for two-years across 685 leading CPG brands and 24,000 retail stores.

Here are a few of the key findings: (more…)