Advocates are those customers who recommend you to others, prefer to buy from you over others, and stay with you. By increasing the number of customer advocates, retailers can improve the quality of their overall customer portfolio, thus optimizing key performance metrics

IBM surveyed nearly 20,000 U.S. consumers to understand the behaviors and attitudes which drive advocacy for their primary retailer in five retail segments — grocery, large format apparel, mall-based specialty (MBS) apparel, drugstore, and online. What we found is those retailers that integrate customer-focused initiatives across the enterprise have a greater number of customer advocates and outperform their competitors.