Loyalty Truth

A picture is worth a thousand words, but since CEO’s don’t generally paint pictures, we have to listen to what they say. One of the best opportunities to listen is when business leaders speak to the investment community. In these venues, one has to assume that the priorities outlined are indicative of the direction the company is following and that the talk is straight.

We’ve been doing some listening and it is interesting to observe the emphasis placed on the Customer, as well as Loyalty and Rewards programs.  Our findings are documented in a new Case Study, available in the Resources section of the Hanifin Loyalty web site.

We read through recent transcripts of earnings calls among leading U.S. fashion retailers including  Macy’s Inc. , Nordstrom, Inc. , Chico’s FAS Inc., Neiman Marcus, Inc. , and Saks, Inc. . All of the transcripts may be found on Seeking Alpha, and we’ve included links in the document as reference. We searched each transcript for the words “Customer“, “Loyalty“, and “Rewards“, believing that higher instances of each word would lead to conversations about customer oriented marketing strategy.

Only in the Nordstrom transcript did all three words appear.  In the others, “Customer” was sprinkled about in varying degrees, sometimes with obvious emphasis, though too often just in passing reference to improvements in “Customer Service”.

The Case Study provides insight into the state of customer-centric marketing during tough economic times, and is one measure of the value placed on building long term Customer Loyalty by leading U.S. fashion retailers. By correlating the word-search results with stock price performance over the past year, there are hints of a link between a retailer’s view of the customer and its financial performance.