Maintain Customer Faith

Research based at University of North Florida found that South Korean consumers who are more religious are also more likely to be repeat store customers. This was true whether the religious folks were Protestants, Catholics, or Buddhists—the three alternatives represented in the study sample. Consumers showing lower levels of religiosity or declaring themselves to be non-religious were more likely to switch stores from one shopping trip to the next.
     What does this research finding mean for you? Allegiance to one’s religious faith is at a whole different dimension of personal importance than resisting store switching. But the stores which earned the repeat business probably maintained the faith of their customers. These retailers kept their promises. Another study—this one based in South Korea at Seoul National University—concluded that when employees are seen as showing good citizenship behavior, customer satisfaction grows.
     The Seoul National University study said more, though: The effectiveness of employee citizenship was highest when salespeople spent time interacting with the shoppers. If you leave the shoppers by themselves—unaware of the values held by the store operators—you lose some of the advantage. On the other hand, when you show shoppers the similarity of your store’s makeup to their own makeup, you build commitment to shopping with you.
     This last point leads to another lesson about long-term payoff: To attract customers who will shop with you religiously, you could get your store involved with religious activities in the community. However, if you fake your store’s personality and values, you’ll probably chase off customers when the fakery reveals itself. That one is a lesson from research out of University of British Columbia and INSEAD-Singapore. But if you and your staff members are people of faith, you don’t need research citations, since you already knew that, didn’t you?