To go one-up on online e-tailers, some brick-and-mortar fashion retailers here are offering personal shopping or styling services to shoppers - often at no charge. With this carrot, they hope to take their service level up a notch and foster customer loyalty. Associate Professor Seshan Ramaswami of marketing education at SMU warns that customers might end up becoming loyal to the stylist instead of the store. And when the stylist leaves, he might just take the clients along with him to a competitor.' Loyalty programmes can help alleviate these problems to a certain extent.
The Straits Times