What price on loyalty when a brand switch is just a click away?

Compares two leading brands in the USA in late 1999: the leading e‐retailer, Amazon.com, and the leading “bricks and mortar” retailer, Wal‐Mart. The two brands were found to enjoy, in their respective markets, similar consumer brand equity, defined in terms of the degree of loyalty felt by category consumers. An examination of UK consumer banking services shows that the newer “direct” banks, which concentrate on Internet and telephone trading, in fact enjoy particularly strong ties of loyalty with their existing customers. The hypothesis of the enormous commoditising impact of e‐retailing is not borne out by the evidence in these two areas where Internet trading has established itself in the USA and the UK. The issues that face the new e‐commerce entrepreneurs remain the same as for “old economy” businesses, namely maximising customer retention, minimising loss and optimising new customer acquisition.