The following literature review of two academic researches serves the purpose of granting insight into the co

creation of customer loyalty as well as the influence of referral programs on customer loyalty towards the
firm. This will grant as insight on further approaches towards our project in service design.

The first paper to use for this purpose, is an empirical study conducted by Cossío-Silva, Revilla-Camacho,
Revilla-Camacho and Palacios-Florencio (2015) concerning the value co creation and customer loyalty.
Value co creation in this context is the involvement of the consumer in the process of value creation, instead
of seeing the consumer as a passive variable (Cossío-Silva et al., 2015). The core of the research is
interrelations of value co creation behavior and attitudinal, the intention of purchase or the recommendation
of the firm, as well as behavioral, loyalty of consumers. Since customer loyalty contributes strongly to the
firm’s success, this research contributes to firms’ developments in consumer relationships.

The findings of the study show significant evidence, of the influence between value co creation and
attitudinal behavior, meaning that the involvement of the customer in the process of value creation influences
the customer purchase behavior towards the firm. Connections to behavioral loyalty on the other hand
couldn’t be proofed (Cossío-Silva et al., 2015).

This study will contribute to our project, as it shows the important contribution the involvement of the
consumer during the process value creation can have towards the success of the firm. The study will help us
therefore to research and possible improve customer relations.

In the second paper Ramaseshan, Wirtz and Georgi (2017) research the influence of referral reward
programs (RRPs) on customer acquisition as well as attitudinal and behavioral loyalty of the customer. Since
previous research focused mainly on the importance RRP acquired vs non-RRP acquired customer and their
importance, Remaseshan et al. (2017) fill the gap of the dynamics of psychological processes, influencing
customers behavior in context of loyalty.

Findings of the study show that the extent to which satisfaction positively influences consumer attitudinal
loyalty is greater for RRP acquired customers compared to non RRP acquisition, meaning that an RRP
acquired customer becomes more positively involved with the firm and is therefore from greater value.
Furthermore, results of the study found switching costs to be less important for RRP. Lastly findings show,
that the impact RRPs have on the relationship between attitudinal and behavioral loyalty are greater for RRP
acquired customers, meaning that these consumers purchase and spend more at the firm in question, hence
making them significantly more valuable (Remaseshan et al.,2017).

In our project we can use the insights of this study to evaluate, if the implementation of a referral reward
system would contribute to the practices of our case company.

References:

- The enhanced loyalty drivers of customers acquired through referral reward programs; B.
Ramaseshan, Jochen Wirtz and Dominik Georgi; 2017, Journal of Service Management Vol. 28
No. 4, Emerald Publishing Limited
- Value co-creation and customer loyalty; Francisco-José Cossío-Silva, María-Ángeles Revilla-
Camacho, Manuela Vega-Vázquez and Beatriz Palacios-Florencio; 2015, Journal of Business
Research 69