An examination of factors leading to abating customer loyalty towards magazine subscriptions

Benjamin Schweizer

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2008
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9783638027922
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Master's Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,0, University of Glamorgan (Business School), language: English, abstract: Customer loyalty in the means of continued subscriptions is key to sustain within a limited market. Where an organisation cannot attract new customers, it must focus on it's competitors and entice customers away. Getting this right depends among others on the retention of customers and therefore, understanding the reasons that make magazine readers cancel their subscriptions. Based upon a review of related theories on customer loyalty and customer retention, and experience from practitioners, a contextual model for the German magazine publishing industry could be created. The magazine reader loyalty model incorporates the generic customer loyalty model (Dick and Basu, 1994) and reflects the typical customer life cycle of magazine subscribers. Focusing on the effect of attitudinal changes, this study utilises related studies, real world databases and brainstorming sessions to create a list of presumed factors that lead to abating customer loyalty towards magazine subscriptions. Within a qualitative-quantitative survey, data on the importance of these factors was collected. From a comparison of former and actual subscribers, the effectiveness of these attributes is investigated. An analysis method based upon probabilities is utilised to overcome the limitations that affected related studies. This novel analysis method enables substantiated statements on the commonness and effectiveness of attitudinal factors and thus, their relevance towards customer loyalty. From this, the most significant factors that lead to a drop out of magazine subscribers could be identified to be i) the time that is available to a reader, ii) the actual reading behaviour, iii) the entertainment value of a magazine, iv) the perceived time savings and v) the availability of alternative magazines and other media. Further, evidence was found that i) the compilation of a magazine, ii) overall satisfaction, iii) fast access to information, iv) delivery satisfaction and v) the discussion of articles with friends and colleagues are of limited use as measurements. Those factors are unlikely and when present, found among former subscribers as well as actual subscribers. This study concludes that some factors are more important than others, especially those that deal with available time and perceived time savings. Decision-makers and marketers should focus on these factors in the first place. Additional, suggestions for further research are given.