Factors Of Brand Loyalty

Firstly, to start with it is important to understand what is Customer loyalty? Loyalty can be explained as an attitudinal or behavior. According to Mark, Grahame & Kathy (2003): “Loyalty is something that consumers may demonstrate their interest to brands, services, stores, product categories. Here, we use the term customer loyalty as opposed to brand loyalty; this is to emphasize that loyalty is a feature of people, rather than something inherent in brands (Mark, Grahame & Kathy, 2003).” To explain it further Customer loyalty is something where consumer or customer likes or prefer to buy

Even with 100% satisfaction there’s always the 10% to 20% typical defection level, and with when loyalty is low, Brand switching occurs which is when a consumer decides to purchase a good from a different brand than the one he or she used to purchase in the same category.

Thus, companies seek to strengthen customer loyalty. Brand loyalty is considered to tilt the consumer to purchase the package / product specific brand (Jacoby and Chestnut, 1978). Later, Oliver (1997) defined loyalty as "a deeply held commitment to REBUY or repatronize preferred product / service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same brand set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing activities, which would result in causing switching behavior "(p. 34). This conceptual definition covers two different aspects of loyalty: the behavioral. This is consistent with an integrated conceptual framework proposed by Dick and Basu (1994), that customer loyalty is regarded as a "power relationship between the relative position of the individual and repeat

At the bottom of this pyramid lies the indifferent consumer with no brand loyalty. Each brand is perceived to be sufficient, yet the specific brand plays little to no role in the purchase decision. Convenience or a sales promotion is a larger factor when purchasing. On this bottom section, the consumer can be labeled a price buyer. Next, there are buyers that are not dissatisfied with product. There is not a large enough reason to stimulate change, especially if the change will result in effort. This section is termed habitual buyers. They are vulnerable to competition that offers an obvious benefit for switching. However, this section is not looking for alternative options; therefore, they might be hard to reach for competitors (Kombrabail, 2009). Next is the satisfied buyer,

Brands - we see them everywhere. Nowadays advertisement has become so common, that it is normal for us to see promotions all around from the moment we get up from bed and up until we go to sleep. We do like some of those advertised brands, and in order buy their production and stay loyal to them. However, some of them we do not and just try to ignore their output. Nevertheless, is it possible to influence people through loyalty programs and why do people choose to stay loyal in the first place? Some believe that companies want to make their customers happy and money is not the main goal for them, but I reckon that it is profitable for companies to have loyal and dependents consumers and it is the main reason of why now we have loyalty programs in our society.

In order to survive in the competitive business environment organisations have to concentrate upon strengthening their consumer’s satisfaction strategies for ensuring consumer loyalty in the long run of business. In order to incorporate a long term customer retention strategy, organisations are in immediate need for assessing and unveiling the reasons and elements prior to the designing and implementation process of the consumer retention programmes. The importance of consumer loyalty could be

In general, brand loyalty is understood to describe the characteristics of those consumers who have a strong commitment to a brand, because they view that brand as being more satisfactory than the alternatives and this evaluation is reinforced through repeated use (Jonna, 2001). The literature is quite clear on what brand loyalty means; however, there are differences of opinion on its measurement. The instrumental conditioning perspective views behavioral measures such as actual purchase patterns as being the best indicators of brand loyalty. This line of research maintains that brand loyalty develops from the positive reinforcement received from trying a brand and being satisfied with it, which leads to repeat purchase (Jonna, 2001). The problem is that behavioral measures cannot distinguish between actual brand loyalty (i.e., affect for the brand) and “spurious” repeat purchase patterns that may result from convenience, availability, inertia, or other factors. The cognitive school proposes that only measures of a consumer’s mental processes and beliefs can make the distinction between actual brand loyalty and spurious behavior (Day, 1969; Lutz & Winn, 1974). From this perspective, brand loyalty is the result of the consumer’s search and attributes evaluation process, which leads to beliefs of brand appropriateness or superiority and repeat purchase. An example of this is the

As a company, customer mentality is important for them to affect the volume of business. Brand loyalty is one of related issues of customer purchasing choices. FOONG YEE and YAHYAH (2008) stated that many companies, especially those in the sportswear industry try to enhance brand loyalty among their customers.

There are no studies which touched on the topic of “loyalty” to hotel brand in Riyadh City in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but there are some studies which had discussed the “loyalty” to a brand in other production sectors. For example, the study of (Salh, 2010 ) as it aimed to study the psychological and social factors and its effect on loyalty of mobiles’ buyers to the brand as the study concluded that there is relation between the psychological and social factors of user and mobile brand. The study of (Hasen, 2017) aimed to know the factors which lead to prefer a specific brand and concluded that there are several factors of preference of a specific brand such as quality, price, specifications and mental image of the brand. The study of (Al-Zabi, 2013 ) strived to examine the effect of concepts relevant to the nature of purchasing decisions, mechanism to make these decisions, methods of its evaluation, explain the types reference groups which affect purchasing decision of consumer of automotive goods and identify the types of effect (informative and standard) and degree of their effect on purchasing decision of consumer of automotive goods. The study of (Al-Khusroom, 2011 ) aimed to know the effect of perceived difference and perceived quality of on consumer’s loyalty to a brand. The study concluded that there is big effect of perceived difference which is created by brand in consumer’s mind in his loyalty towards this brand. Also, the perception of

The research results showed that product quality was not the strongest factor that led to brand loyalty but market inertia and that product quality was more likely to lead

Since brand loyalty constitute of attitudes and behavior to settle on a brand. Attribution theory looks into illustrating the driving force behind decision making. For a brand loyalist to be, multiple mental deductions must be undertaken to get to the most sequentially logical conclusion based on situation at hand.

By and large, loyal customers will be beneficial to a brand as it can reduce the cost of marketing. Moreover, customer loyalty can be made the most of brand extension and market penetration strategies. As a final point, “loyal customer is an asset for a brand, and has been identified as major determinant of brand equity” (Dekimpe et al., 1997:20).

Reflecting these critical aspects of brand loyalty in advertising, and marketing in general, the study of brand loyalty has been represented in the literature for more than eight decades, since Copeland’s introduction of brand insistence in 1923 ( Jacoby and Chestnut 1978). Early research was primarily focused on the operational definition of behavioral aspects (i.e., repeated purchase) of brand loyalty, but starting with Jacoby and Chestnut (1978), brand loyalty has been studied in terms of both attitudinal and behavioral aspects. Linking attitudinal and behavioral loyalty, some recent efforts have provided significant conceptual frameworks that distinguish true brand loyalty from spurious brand loyalty (e.g., commitment: Odin, Odin, and Valette-Florence 2001; brand sensitivity: Bloemer and Kasper 1995; commitment and trust: Morgan and Hunt 1994). True brand loyalty can be conceptualized

The field of marketing has experienced a paradigm shift because of the fact that the principles of relationships have nearly substituted short-term exchange notions. While the relationship perspective has received increased acceptance and relevance, it has been hugely under-realized in many marketing literature. According to the findings of research, customers generally want brands to listen and respond to them. Consequently, brands that involve and engage customers in relationships that are mutually beneficial stand to gain the most. This is primarily because customers are willing to demonstrate huge support to brands they regard as favorite. The support is mainly demonstrated through buying more of the product or service, convincing other people to become customers of the product or service, and positive word of mouth. Notably, the main link to the relationship between customers and brands is the desire for brands to listen and respond to customers rather than seeking to sell the products or services at the cheapest prices.

Three conceptual perspectives have been suggested to define customer loyalty: the behavioral perspective, the attitudinal perspective, and composite perspective (Bowen and Chen, 2001; Zins, 2001). Firstly, the behavioral perspective looks at repeat purchase behavior based on the customer’s purchase history. This approach assumes that preference structure of the customer is reflected in the customer’s behavior (Ehrenberg, 1988). In contrast, the attitudinal perspective allows gain in supplemental understanding of loyal behavior (Zins, 2001). Attitude signifies the degree to which a customer’s deposition towards a service is favorably inclined. (Grembler and Brown, 1996). Some examples of operational measures in attitudinal perspective are preference, buying intention, supplier prioritization and recommendation willingness (Fournier and Yao, 1997). The third perspective combines both attitudinal and behavioral definitions of loyalty. The composite perspective is considered an alternative to affective loyalty that increases the predictive power of loyalty (Pritchard and Howard, 1997).