Creating Loyal Customers with Digital Marketing Applications: The 5A Model

As a result of the effects of the digital revolution, it became very difficult for brands to attract the attention of consumers, to sustain this, and to eventually turn them into loyal customers. In this context, the primary purpose of the chapter is to examine how the brand-customer interaction is realized in the way of creating loyal customers with digital marketing activities. The secondary important goal in this section is to provide examples of digital marketing practices carried out by tourism companies in Asian countries to create loyal customers. Also in this section, which subcultures are more important in terms of digital marketing and what are the basic skills that businesses should have in building loyalty in the digital age. When the relevant literature is examined, it can be said that in the context of the Asian tourism industry, this area is left under-researched. In this context, secondary data, generated from the existing literature, were used to collect data. According to the results obtained, Kotler, Kartajaya, and Setiawan (2017)’s 5A (Awareness, Appeal, Ask, Act and Advocacy) model, developed instead of the AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) model, consisting of aware, appeal, ask, act, and advocacy stages can be proposed as an important model that can integrate the developments in the digital age into brand-customer interaction. While the subcultures that businesses should focus more on attaining loyal customers are youths, women, and Internet citizens (netizens), the basic skills that businesses should have can be expressed as automation, proactive personalization, contextual interaction, and innovation. It is observed that the activities carried out by the tourism companies in Asian countries to create a loyal customer base are concentrated on the loyalty programs in general. It can be said that these programs, which bring various monetary rewards to users, are also integrated with digital technologies. Besides, it has been observed that businesses concentrate more on aware and appeal stages. However, to obtain a loyal customer group more easily in the digital age, businesses need to carry out activities that may attract the attention of consumers during the ask, act, and advocacy stages.