Northumbria University

Faculty Member, Newcastle Business School

Principal Lecturer

About

Dr David Grundy is a Principal Lecturer at Newcastle Business School investigating customer retention, commitment, trust, membership and community building & management in both online and offline environments for both businesses and the public sector. I can be contacted at david.grundy@northumbria.ac.uk



Dr David Grundy USP/Offering: Customer Retention, Loyalty and Brand Communities

In business how we retain the customers we have, and develop those relationships to enhance loyalty to both the brand and the service or product, is a core competency.  Through my on-going research I’ve examined the customer’s choice to maintain, sustain and repeated pay for services and how customers develop both commitment and trust towards a business. Increasingly, in our evermore online business world, businesses are using loyalty increasing tools such as online loyalty schemes, online brand-reinforcing communities and membership clubs to develop not only the traditional business-to-customer lines of communication but also customer-to-customer forums for reinforcing and developing a brand community. My research specifically examines this development of membership, community building & management in online environments for both businesses and the public sector. My research focuses on how companies are using social networking and Web 2.0 loyalty building solutions to facilitate and sustain customer commitment decisions and how by building into these platforms value added, capital building activities,  businesses can develop reasons for customers to remain loyal and potentially barriers to leaving as well. There are pitfalls to brand community based business strategies, particularly in online environments (Grundy, 2007a; 2007b) and through my research I aim to allow companies to understand both the (often ignored or discounted) risks of using online loyalty solutions to engage with customers (Grundy, 2008a; 2008b) while still emphasizing the potency of brand community strategies and underlining their ability to “increase customer loyalty, lower marketing costs, authenticate brand meaning” (Fournier and Lee, 2009).

References

Fournier, S. and Lee, L. (2009) Getting Brand Communities Right, Harvard Business Review, 4, pp. 105-111

Grundy, D. (2007a) The Seedy Underbelly of Second Life, Times Higher Education Supplement, Available at: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=310547

Grundy, D. (2007b) Interview for Radio 5 Live on Virtual cash, Tuesday, 22 May 2007, Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/podsandblogs/2007/05/virtual_cash_congo_and_podcast_1.shtml

Grundy, D. (2008a) The Presence of Stigma Amongst Users of the MMORPG RMT: A Hypothetical Case Approach, Games & Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media, 3 (2), pp.225-247

Grundy, D. (2008b) May Cover Story Cyber crime: Are we living a life of virtual worlds, virtual crimes but with real consequences?, E.Learning Age: The UK's leading blended and online learning publication, Available at: http://www.elearningage.co.uk/maycover.aspx

Contact Information