Impact of Electronic Marketing (E-Marketing) on Customer Loyalty to Brand Choice Among Retail Supermarkets in Kisumu City, Kenya

The global business scene has witnessed transformation in terms of information accumulation in digital form in the recent past thanks to emergence of internet. In turn, marketers have been able to gather customer data and deploy online marketing activities to solicit customer loyalty through platforms such as personalised email, social media networks, and SMS alert among others. Whereas existing studies have shown that such e-marketing platforms are significant in improving customer loyalty, the same has not been proved among retail supermarkets especially in cities such as Kisumu with widespread trends of branches of over 20% in the last two years. This paper explored the relationship between e-marketing and customer loyalty to brand choice among supermarkets in Kisumu city. Specific objectives were to establish the effect of personalised email marketing, social media marketing, and SMS alert marketing on loyalty to brand choice. B.E.S.T. (Behavioral, Essential, Strategic and Targeted) theory formulated by Pulizzi & Barrett, (2009) was used to guide the study. Correlational survey design was adopted on a target population of 371 employees from eight supermarkets. Yamane’s formula (1987) was used to obtain a sample size of 193 respondents. Data was analysed by means of descriptive statistics, while the relationship between customer relationship marketing and loyalty to brand choice was estimated using regression analysis. Findings revealed that personalised email marketing (B=7.29), social media marketing (B=19.277) and SMS alert marketing (B=51.39) all have significant (p=0.000) effect on loyalty to brand choice. The three variables contribute 25.3% change in loyalty of customers to brand choice (R2 =0.253; p=0.000). This implies that 74.7% change in customer loyalty to brand choice is caused by other factors other than electronic customer marketing practices. The study concludes that SMS alert marketing has the highest effect on loyalty of customer to brand choice. Supermarkets should ensure that SMS alerts are persistently sent relevant customers to enhance their loyalty to brand choice is enhanced. Further studies are recommended on the influence of customer SMS alerts at entry points on loyalty to brand choice and the effect of product discount on customer loyalty to brands merchandised by supermarkets. The study findings might help in formulation of electronic CRM practices capable of enhancing loyalty of customers.