Clusterwise pls-path modelling for customer loyalty analysis in heterogeneous markets: a case study on the customers of a superstore

Customer loyalty analysis aims at detecting suitable strategies to strengthen loyalty of customers. Like in customer satisfaction analysis, PLS-Path Modeling (PLS-PM) appears to be a suitable technique to attain this goal. Basic PLS-PM assumes homogene- ity over population so, since customers have different loyalty behaviors, a PLS-path model should be applied to each homogeneous subgroup. Nevertheless, as this grouping is unknown before starting customer loyalty analysis, two ways are practicable: (i) to carry out a-priori marketing segmentation followed by local PLS-path models; (ii) to carry out both actions by model-based segmentation. This paper puts forward some considerations about these two different approaches.