In today’s fast-paced and increasingly competitive market, the bottom line of a firm’s
marketing strategies and tactics is to make profits and contribute to the growth of the
company. Customer satisfaction, quality and retention are global issues that affect all
organizations, be it large or small, profit or non-profit, global or local. Many companies are
interested in studying, evaluating and implementing marketing strategies that aim at
improving customer retention and maximizing share of customers in view of the beneficial
effects on the financial performance for the firm. There has been a strong advocacy for the
adoption of customer retention as one of the key performance indicators (e.g. Kaplan and
Norton, 2001). For instance, a study by Reichheld and Sasser (1990) reported a high
correlation between customer retention and profitability in a range of industries. However,
the fragmentation of media choices and the dynamic nature of the market, coupled with an
increased number of more demanding and affluent consumers, brought greater challenges to
marketing practitioners in retaining their customers.