Loyalty: From Single-Stage Loyalty to Four-Stage Loyalty

Mohammad Javad TaghiPourian , Mahsa Mashayekh Bakhsh

In today’s competitive world, customers are at the center of companies’ attention. Customer loyalty is a pivotal element of gaining competitive advantage. The creation of customer loyalty is a concept that contemporary businesses have paid significant attention to it. Despite the abundant of studies done on one-dimensional loyalty and two-dimensional loyalty (behavioral and attitudinal), there unfortunately exist few number of studies on loyalty with three or four dimensions. As a result, there is insufficient amount of literature in this regard. In this study, therefore, an investigation of the evolution of loyalty throughout time, from one dimension to four dimensions, is carried out together with a definition of the concept.