1.3 SERVICE LOYALTY
Many service organizations have developed customer loyalty programs as a part of relations development
activities. Customer loyalty is a complicated concept. Oxford Dictionary defines loyalty as a state of true to
allegiance. But the mere repeated purchase by customers has been mixed with the above mentioned definition of
loyalty. In service domain, loyalty has been defined in an extensive form as “observed behaviors” (Bloemer et al.,
1999). Caruana (2002) argues that behavior is a full expression of loyalty to the brand and not just thoughts.
However, behavior standards (such as repeated purchase) have been criticized, due to the lack of a conceptual
basis of a dynamic process (Caruana, 2002). For example, the low frequency of repeated purchase of a special
service may be resulted from different situation factors, such as non-availability or absence of a provider.
According to this point of view, loyal behavior cannot offer a comprehensive conception of fundamental causes
of loyalty. Additionally, repetition may be due to different restrictions resulted from the market. Consequently,
the loyalty of this type of customers mainly differs from the loyalty of those customers who seriously support a
product, and do have psychological bond with a product and a company. Therefore, customer’s loyalty was considered as an attitudinal structure. For example, this issue appears in the tendency to advise the service offer
to other customers. Finally, in addition to behavioral and attitudinal approaches, another approach to customer’s
loyalty, called cognitive approach, was introduced. The operational definition of this approach often refers to the
first product or service which comes to the mind of a person, while making decision for purchase. Meanwhile, in
their definition of this approach, Ostrowski et al. (1993) and Bloemer (1999) refer to the first product or service
that a person chooses among products and services.