The Prisoner-Apostle Model
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Mon, Aug 18, 2008
The Prisoner-Apostle Model is a qualitative expansion of the Apostle Model, developed for the service industry. It was introduced in the paper "From prisoners to apostles: a typology of repeat buyers and loyal customers in service businesses", by Carolyn Folkman Curasi and Karen Norman Kennedy, a paper which has been cited over 200 times.
The five customer types of this model are:
- Prisoner - "trapped repeaters" - Consumers who purchase from an organization because they have few other choices. As a result, satisfaction and loyalty measures are irrelevant.
- Detached Loyalists - "would be switchers" - Consumers with few other options who resist changing primarily because of perceived switching costs.
- Purchased Loyalists - "consumers' loyalty bought" - Consumers who do not switch for structural reasons, such as rewards programs or other incentives for repeat business.
- Satisfied Loyalists - "reasonably satisfied customers" - Consumers who are satisfied and do not have a reason to switch; a competitor can lure them away by offering better service or a better price.
- Apostles - "involved participants" - Consumers who have made an emotional commitment to a brand or who have taken action on behalf of the brand.
This model cannot easily be reduced to a graph, as one axis would not be customer satisfaction but "the importance of customer satisfaction". It is valuable when segmenting customers through qualitative research, rather than through quantitative research.
Tomorrow, we'll take a look at Sasser's revision to the Apostle Model.
Update: This post is part of the series The Apostle Model and Related Loyalty Segmentations.