of its marketing activities, to gain new customers. Each of these will
now be addressed.
Advocacy referrals (advocate–initiated customer
referrals)
Customers become advocates when they are totally satisfied with a
company’s products or services. Research by Jones and Sasser^2 has
found that, except in rare cases, total or complete customer satisfac-
tion is the key element in securing customer loyalty and that there
is a tremendous difference between the loyalty of merely satisfied
and completely satisfied customers. They cite Xerox research which
found that totally satisfied customers were six times more likely to
repurchase Xerox products and services than its satisfied customers,
over the next 18 months. In discussing measurement of loyalty,
Jones and Sasser discuss a range of measures, including secondary
behaviour:
Customer referrals, endorsements, and spreading the word are
extremely important forms of consumer behaviour for a company. In
many product and service categories, word of mouth is one of the
most important factors in acquiring new customers. Frequently, it is
easier for a customer to respond honestly to a question about
whether he or she would recommend the product or service to
others than to a question about whether he or she intended to
repurchase the product or service. Such indications of loyalty,
obtained through customer surveys, are frequently ignored because
they are soft measures of behaviour that are difficult to link to even-
tual purchasing behaviour.Which companies have a high proportion of customers who make
such referrals and endorsements and exhibit advocacy? Discussions
with many consumers and marketing executives suggest the fol-
lowing as examples:
●Airlines: British Airways,Virgin Airlines
●Banking: First Direct
●Computers: Dell Computers
●Healthcare: Shouldice – a Canadian hospital
●Industrial services: Service Master – a US cleaning services company
●Motor cars: Lexus, Mercedes
224 Relationship Marketing