(How)Book Review Loyalty Myths Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out Of Business And Proven Tactics That Really Work

Have you ever wondered if some of those age-old marketing sayings are true? For example, we've all heard, “It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing customer.” But does anyone have any proof of this? That's exactly what a group of authors set out to do in Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business—and Proven Tactics That Really Work. The authors, Timothy L. Keiningham, Terry G. Marva, Larzan Aksay, and Henri Willard, are all experts in consumer loyalty and use their wealth of knowledge to debunk common myths and offer insight into what really works. The book chooses an interesting format - the first six chapters are devoted to debunking more than fifty common "loyalty myths", and the last two chapters are used to learn why customers are loyal and how a loyalty program should be run. Each of the "loyalty myths" chapters contains several "myths" grouped by common themes, such as loyalty myths that undermine company goals and employee loyalty myths. Chapters begin and end with an example taken from an industry that includes all the myths mentioned in the chapter, with actual myths discussed in the middle. The authors spend several pages debunking each of the fifty-three myths. Some myths are things we tend to take for granted, like "Companies tend to know their customers," while others like "share of wallet increases as customers live longer" seem intuitively true. For each, the authors use solid historical data to dispel the myth and show the negative business impacts of believing it. The final two chapters focus on seven 'loyalty truths' such as "Don't keep customers before you take care of customer choice" and "Customer loyalty and brand perceptions are far from independent; you have to manage them hand in hand." The authors do a good job of walking through how to build and measure a loyalty program based on these 'truths.' The book is a very brisk, fun read. Anyone who reads the book with an open mind will agree with the author's strong points. In particular, business owners, CEOs, and anyone in marketing or consumer affairs will directly benefit from removing these "myths" from their business and introducing the "truths." This book can have a very real impact on your company's bottom line. Many businesses mindlessly pour money into customer loyalty programs without taking the steps outlined in this book. For some companies, a loyalty program doesn't even make sense. For others, their program needs a significant overhaul. This book will help you find out where your business is and give you the tools to improve. The only drawback of the book is the number of myths. Many of the "myths" are mixed together, and readers would probably be more likely to retain the "myths" if there were ten of them rather than fifty-three (similar to the seven "truths"). Also, the number of myths does not allow the authors to go into every “myth as much detail as one would like.” There are a few myths that are not so much scattered in a paragraph or two devoted to it, but in the context of an entire chapter. It just seems like it would make more sense to combine many myths. All in all, Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business—and Proven Tactics That Really Work is an extremely entertaining and informative read. Anyone interested in consumer loyalty will learn a lot of actionable information that can save their business money and help differentiate it from the competition.