Marketing and Customer Loyalty ─ The Extra Step Approach

This book analyzes the evolution of marketing and the ways in which marketing actions can be rendered more effective, before setting out a new approach to marketing, termed The Extra Step (TES) in recognition of the importance that it attributes to the final extra step in enhancing the effectiveness of marketing efforts. Readers will find clear description of the pathway from purchase to loyalty and the various means of developing customer loyalty. It is explained how the TES approach goes one step further by considering the consumer as a partner whose involvement during the production and fine tuning phase of products and services can help to increase the efficiency of customer loyalty actions implemented by companies. The theoretical analysis is supported by observations and empirical evidence relating to the concepts and benefits of the TES approach. These examples concern firms in Italy, Europe, and the United States, including insurance agencies, pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies, and food distribution companies. The TES approach is of wide relevance and especially valid for the service sector.

Mauro Cavallone began working at the University of Bergamo as an Assistant Professor after obtaining his first degree in Business Economics in 1980. Gradually, he went on to become Lecturer, Researcher, Associate Professor, and Director of the School of Management, a position in which he was in charge of coordinating postgraduate program activities. He is currently responsible for the “image and branding” of the university. His main research interests have always been customer relationship management, customer retention and satisfaction, and consumer behavior; this last aspect became a central theme of his work following his second degree in Sociology (1993). His professional experience has combined the academic and the business world. He worked for several companies over a period of nine years in Italy and also abroad, as a bank teller, in the foreign office, in the marketing department of First Pennsylvania Bank (Philadelphia), and as a sales and marketing manager in different sectors (mail order sales, electrical appliances, fashion). In 1990, he approached the consulting world and founded a company that is still active in the continuing education and training sector.