Customer retention dynamics of organized ready-to-wear textiles retailers in real and virtual markets

Customer retention dynamics have been receiving attention of the academic researchers especially for the last two decades. The challenging conditions of the swiftly increasing global competition have increased the importance of the customer retention concept in order to be able to foresee and react to the changes both in the competitive off-line and on-line business environment. This dissertation focuses on the customer retention strategy formulation among the marketing top level executives and senior management of the related companies. This study is an attempt to define the creation of customer retention intensions through explaining the proposed relationships between these dimensions based on the applications and ideas of the managers working at the leading organized ready-to-wear retailers of Turkey. A model is developed and related hypotheses are constructed based on the relevant academic literature and then tested through measuring attitudes of top management executives and marketing managers of leading organized ready-to-wear retailers in Turkey, who are members of United Brands Association and both active in off-line and online channels. The survey that has been conducted within this study employs an interval scale questionnaire, which has been applied online by sending an e-mail to each respondent including the website link of the survey and a scanned signed cover letter. The research findings provide useful implications to be considered on the way to sustain customer retention. The study is an attempt to reveal the attitudes of business professionals towards formulating inter-organizational customer retention strategies within the context of the proposed model in the dissertation.