Isn’t Customer Loyalty a "memory trace"?

In an Internet shopping world, what is the meaning of customer loyalty? Type “loyalty” at Thesaurus.com and you will see definitions like Affection, Faithfulness and Constancy, and synonyms such as Adherence, Affinity and Allegiance. When you strip down the concept of Loyalty in the human mind, you will find that Loyalty is simply an accumulation of memory traces – a memory trace being a “summary or tag” of a memory of an experience. In other words, the memory trace, when followed, will actually lead you to the memory of the actual experience. Simple enough, right? Now, in the physical retail world, a memory trace can be a conversation with a sales person, or the smell of the store (Aveda? Anyone?)-Or the physical appearance of the store or the sales person or both or a scent that reminded you of an ex boyfriend (or girlfriend). But what happens in the Internet Retail or Non Physical or Virtual world? I’ll get to it in a second. Now, keep in mind, that in the physical world, you (as the retailer) have little control over where a customer walks, what she picks up, what she looks at, and so on, despite skilled sales people and deliberate store layout and product arrangement. In the Internet world, however, it seems like you have a greater ability to manipulate a customers’ interaction often and at little cost – and therefore a greater ability to control the memory that leads to loyalty. For example, you control the visual aspects of the site (gradients, resolution, colors, ‘depth’, product arrangement, fonts, numbers (price!), words, descriptions, ideas; you control the aural aspect (not of the aura but of the ear) as in music and voices among others and you also control the “path” on which the customer is led- creating a sum total of “experience” on your site and an opportunity to create loyalty at every step. Add to this the unique ability the Internet offers, to personalize every interaction the customer has with your site and you have a situation where you CAN actually manipulate (I mean that in a good way) that memory which leads to “loyalty”. This could be one way of explaining the concept of “branding every customer impression”- make sense? So in effect, loyalty is not an emotional connection at its very root. It is a memory of an experience (which could be emotional) a customer has stored in her mind. What it really is; is a “memory bank” of interactions with a particular entity (in this case your website). Think about it…

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