Understanding the factors and antecedents that generate and maintain customer loyalty to retail stores is a primary concern in consumer research as it spawned an extensive publication stream during the last 50 years. Empirical research has purposefully focused on the role of individual and institutional drivers in long-established consumer outcomes such as customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. However, a coherent explanation of why and how customer loyalty to retail stores takes place is missing. Thus, the main objective of this Research Topic is to advance research that exhibits cause-effect relationships and are systematically integrated into a body of scientific knowledge.
Four peer-evaluated empirical articles provide evidence, analysis, and discussion of plausible explanations of customer loyalty to retail stores. Retail customer loyalty is examined as a factor, a mediator, and an outcome, using established theoretical models and applications to different consumer products in various demographic contexts.
Loyalty in the time of COVID-19 (Cruz-Milán) appraises consumer loyalty toward tourism destinations in the context of the coronavirus disruptions and offers a review of studies from 24 journal articles that have empirically investigated the drivers of destination loyalty during the pandemic in diverse geographical settings. The factors of destination loyalty found statistically significant include satisfaction, happiness, emotional values, and destination characteristics.
The influence of customer trust and artificial intelligence on customer engagement and loyalty (Chen et al.) investigates how customer trust in home-sharing hosts and platforms affects customer relationships, manifested in customer engagement and loyalty. Despite the negative moderating role of artificial intelligence, customer engagement mediates a strong relationship between customer trust and loyalty.
How organizational trust impacts organizational citizenship behavior: Organizational identification and employee loyalty as mediators (Dai et al.) examines how employee's trust in the organization is one of the major factors affecting employee loyalty, which,
in turn, can reduce turnover possibility and absenteeism, improve job performance, and promote OCB and voice behavior.
Examining the effect of consumer experience on co-creation and loyalty for healthy meat consumption (Meeprom et al.) examines how customer loyalty, defined as both attitudinal and behavioral, is significantly impacted by customer co-creation, which, in turn, is positively influenced by sensory experiences and health consciousness.
Overall, these four studies significantly contribute to the discovery and explanation of customer loyalty, as a factor, a mediator, and an outcome, within the meaningful explanatory models used and in diverse consumption contexts. As these examples hope to demonstrate, further research in the same direction and with similar striving results can be pursued.
Statements
Author contributions
AV-P: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. MS: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. FM: Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing.
Funding
The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Summary
Keywords
explanation of store loyalty, drivers of store loyalty, store loyalty theoretical frameworks, retail stores, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction
Citation
Vasquez-Párraga AZ, Sahagún MA and Musso F (2024) Editorial: Towards an emerging science of customer loyalty to retail stores: explanation, drivers, and frameworks. Front. Psychol. 15:1365333. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1365333
Received
04 January 2024
Accepted
31 January 2024
Published
15 February 2024
Volume
15 - 2024
Edited and reviewed by
Darren C. Treadway, Niagara University, United States
Updates
Copyright
© 2024 Vasquez-Párraga, Sahagún and Musso.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Arturo Z. Vasquez-Párraga arturo.vasquez@utrgv.edu
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.