1.2. Consumer loyalty definition

According to Oliver (1999), consumer loyalty can determined as:

«… A deeply held commitment to rebuy or patronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same brand-set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behaviour.»

From the determination, given upwards, consumer loyalty can be shared into two measurements: behavioral and attitudinal. Behavioral loyalty can be seen as repeated transactions and attitudinal loyalty is usually presented as both absolute affect on the relationship length and a striving to go on being in these relationships (Ball, et. al., 2004). There have taken a place several debates regarding the two measurements touched earlier.

In accordance with Dwayne and his colleagues, behavioral and attitudinal loyalties are deeply interwoven. In contrast, from the point of Leverin and Liljanderpoint of view (2006), from time to time behavioral loyalty does not certainly repulse attitudinal loyalty. Apart from that, consumer loyalty could be seen as two measurements: the first is passive loyalty and the second one is active (Ball, et. al., 2004). Active loyalty is similar to consumers’ WOM and their tendency to purchase favored products and services. Passive loyalty can be explained in a way that consumers do not shift the preferences over products and services even in different, in a less degree positive conditions.

1.3. Objective statement

On the path from conventional marketing method to contemporary relationship marketing methods, various principles have various effects, which influence the consumers’ loyalty. Apart from that, relationship marketing and diverse concepts (consumer loyalty strategy/consumer loyalty satisfaction, appeared in 1980s and early 90s (Leverin & Liljander, 2006). It is relatively a new object. There is a lot of data that touches the topic (f. ex., the significance of consumer loyalty strategy and how to fulfill it). In that paper, it is aimed to research what factors affect the consumer loyalty strategy, specifically for extended international businesses with a wide market. In this work, the IKEA Case will be studied in order to examine and talk over IKEA consumer loyalty strategies. In that paper, the discussion is divided into 3 parts:

• What type of strategies does IKEA follow in order to build a consumer loyalty?

• IKEA has companies in many countries, including Sweden. Do they put into practice one strategy for all markets?

• Examining Swedish market, how does IKEA cope with challenges, arising while realization of consumer loyalty strategies?

In this paper, it will recoursed to the qualitative approach in order to categorize the data gathered from the interview (questionnaire). Despite the fact, that there is a big distance between Harstad (Norway) and Stockholm (Sweden) it was decided, that it is better to be short of time, but to have an opportunity to interview a focus group of Swedish IKEA mall face to face. And then processed results will be matched with the analyzed theoretics. In the end, the outcome of that paper will be supped up. There is also a number of limitations in the work:

1. Through the approach applied in the work (private interviewing), the results can differ from expectations much.

2. In this work, only one organization will be studied, so the information gathered from interview is unlikely to be fully exhaustive.

3. As far as I am not English or Swedish native speaker, some language-level difficulties during the interview process can be faced.