The term “Brand Loyalty” also called as “Customer Loyalty” has been in the business industry since a very long time as a model to be used in conducting business. But it wasn’t until the mid to late 1900’s that the term was actually given its due importance by making it a vital part of advertising and marketing. The concept of marketing evolved substantially from being focused on sales of a product to having Customer satisfaction to be its focal point. Studies further revealed that there was a positive correlation between customer satisfaction and Brand Loyalty.
The behavior in which a consumer keeps buying a product time and again instead of buying products from other competitive companies is called Brand Loyalty. Brand loyalty can often be termed as Customer Loyalty, Brand Commitment, Product Loyalty etc. Brand Loyalty is seen among consumers when they realize that the product is better than the other products that are available in the market. This affinity of a consumer towards a particular product is considered to be brand loyalty. Although, this consumer behavior is not limited to a simple repetition of a purchase, there is also a psychological reasoning behind the consumers’ affinity towards behavior.
The concept of Brand loyalty is defined in terms of 6 necessary and sufficient conditions. These conditions are as follows: -
1. Biased (i.e., nonrandom),
2. Behavioral response,
3. Expressed over time,
4. Some decision-making unit,
5. With respect to 1 or more
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
Furthermore, the publication suggests that the brand loyalty is correlated with market share. So, the bigger the company is, the more loyalty among its customers. And, this is true because the more people get to know the company, its services, and its products, the more brand identity it will form among current customers. Also, large companies benefit from having more loyal customers because they engage in word-of-mouth activities which can potentially attract more customers. So, there are many ways in which a company can increase their loyalty levels. But, when it comes to increasing market share, a better way could involve the increase in revenues among consumers. This can be done by opening more stores, offering products online, and by offering volume discounts. And, as a result, the company may be able to increase revenues and potentially increase its market share. Eventually, it could lead to an increase in the amount of loyal customers overall. Moreover, it can be said that loyalty programs and other related marketing activities can only make a difference in the long-run because the result are hardly noticeable in the short-run due to the fact that it takes time for a buyer to become an actual loyal customer.
Simplified brand loyalty describes a status in which consumers determine their selves in; out of it they become committed to a brand. Thereby they continue purchasing products or services of a specific brand. At this point consumers rather spent more money on a product of a specific brand than buying from multiple suppliers within the same category. Mainly brand loyalty is a result of consumer’s behavior, which is enforced through a company’s measurements regarding branding. Branding is a process that a company runs through in order to establish a new brand. The ambition here is to strengthen a unique name and image for a product in
Primarily the loyalty is based on perception, not tangible evidence. Here we can see how important brand equity and positioning can be to a product that is otherwise probably on par with many of its competitors, but the message conveyed by the brand is quite different.
Brand loyalty is a measure of the attachment that a customer has to a brand. This loyalty reflects how likely a customer will become a brand switcher. Brand switching increases when the brand makes a change, planned or unplanned, such as price, product features or an unexpected crisis. According to Aacker, there is a brand loyalty pyramid.
Brand loyalty is a contributing factor for competitive advantage in the domestic airline industry. Businesses in mature industries spend a lot of time and money developing their brand. Virgin Blue has a culture of helpfulness and irreverence and the “flying kangaroo” symbol is central to the Qantas brand Hill et al. (2007, p. 116). Brand loyalty makes it harder for new entrants to enter the market.
Customers will remain loyal based on the innovation and quality of the product. The distribution and advertising of the brand was also further investigated as well as consumer confidence.
Customer loyalty is the key objective of customer relationship. Loyalty only occurs when there is a positive attitude to a brand perceived to be different. The individual market segments should be targeted in terms of developing customer loyalty. Loyalty is not just repeat buying but also involves the attitudes of customers to a brand. When a customer feels that the product or service was highly satisfying they develop loyalty. If they do not feel as if the product and service was not satisfying there might negative effects.
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
Brand loyalty, long a central construct in marketing, is a measure of the attachment that a customer has to a brand. It reflects how likely a customer will be to switch to another brand, especially when that brand makes a change, either in price or in product features. As brand loyalty increases, the vulnerability of the customer base to competitive action is reduced. It is one indicator of brand equity which is demonstrably linked to future profits, since brand loyalty directly translates into future sales.
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
This research investigates the impact of Brand Loyalty on consumer preference. Independent Variables selected for this research were Brand Image, Brand quality, Brand perception to explore the impact of these independent variables on Consumer preference (Dependent variable). For this purpose, Primary research has been conducted. The questionnaire survey for this research study was administered among the population mainly at the different Universities. For this research study, a sample size of 250 respondents has been taken into consideration. University students constitute the sample for this research study using random sampling (non-probabilistic) used as a sampling
According to A Theory of Multidimensional Brand Loyalty (Sheth & Park, 1974), brand loyalty was a positive bias toward the brand and they classified brand loyalty behavior into three dimensions. Firstly, emotive tendency, it relate to positive emotion toward favorable brand than other brands such as likeliness, premium-value, etc. Secondly, evaluation tendency, it relate to positive evaluation toward the particular brand. For instance, consumer may evaluate particular brand that it has higher performance, which affect the utility of product, so they intend to buy the particular brand over the other brands due to the positive evaluation. Thirdly, behavioral tendency, it relate to the trust on physical activities of brand. The consumer may trust on the brand and consume it even they have to pay in advance. Hence, this behavior needs to learn from buying experience and consuming product of the brand as usual. Moreover, Sheth and Park stated that at least one of these three dimensions could create brand loyalty. Hence, as showing in Figure1, there would
There can be numerous factors intended for repeat purchase like convenience of customer or deficit of viable alternatives. The study relating to their relationships signifies that corporate image has effects on branding as because of positive corporate image in the company the company loyalty of their product or service improves. In such in instances the loyal customers will be ready pay higher price for their favorite brand. So, it can be figured the positive corporate image of a company helps throughout enhancing and bettering the brand loyalty one of the customers and your improved brand loyalty eventually ends up with repeat purchase through the
From the above definitions of customer loyalty, I can say that it is related to attitude or behaviour of the customers over a product or service resulting in repeat purchasing or patronizing. It is also said that loyalty is also closely related to commitment but is different from its reciprocity because it is usually applied for customer-seller relationship (Pritchard, 1999). In addition, customer loyalty consists of not only building but maintaining a relationship with one’s customer (Chow & Holden, 1997). According to Mitchell & Sanders (1995), that customer loyalty has been described as a connection and commitment to seller’s offering over the long term. Furthermore, Jones and Sasser (1995) discovered that one of the key element of securing customer loyalty is through customer satisfaction.