Customer loyalty – a relevant concept for libraries?

In commercial contexts the concept of customer loyalty has received much attention, because there is perceived to be a link to profitability. A review of the theoretical work on this concept identifies that loyalty has both attitudinal and behavioural elements. Categories of loyals proposed by Dick and Basu are defined by the relationship between attitudinal and behavioural aspects of loyalty. Antecedents to loyalty include cognitive, affective and conative factors. The management of loyalty must focus on the control or modification of these antecedents. This offers an agenda for further debate within specific libraries. The outcomes of any programme to manage loyalty needs to be evaluated and measured. The measurement of loyalty poses some interesting challenges in terms of the definitions of the attitudes and behaviours that it might be appropriate to measure. Library managers need to identify which measures are the most appropriate for their context