Customer Loyalty Analysis in an heterogeneus market: a comparison between a priori segmentation and model based segmentation

Aim of Customer Loyalty Analysis is detecting suitable strategies to make loyal a customer. Like in Customer Satisfaction Analysis PLS-Path Modeling (PLSPM) is a suitable technique. As PLS-PM assumes homogeneity over population and customers’ behaviors are different about loyalty, a PLS-Path model should be run in each homogeneous subgroup. Nevertheless these groups are not known. Then two way are possible: to use an a priori marketing segmentation or to adopt a model-based segmentation. The paper presents a short reflection on these different approaches.