Brand Loyalty And The Factors That Affect It: A Study Of Dangote Sugar Refinery
BY
BALOGUN SHERIFF
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this research is to investigate the idea of choice in a marketing context, if there is such a thing as a choice and if so, what does the idea of loyalty amount to in terms of suspended will by way of instilling into a consumer the sense of loyalty towards a brand, a product or a service and the factors that are responsible for brand loyalty especially in the Nigerian Sugar Refineries. Previous research had shown that product quality has an effect on brand loyalty but there is still little or no literature discussing the extent to which product quality influences brand loyalty and none of the product quality models adopted for the Nigerian market. The qualitative and quantitative research methods were used; interviews were conducted on four Dangote Sugar Refineries personnel
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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
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
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.
The brand loyalty reflects a customer's commitment to remain in a long‐term relationship with a brand (Jing, Andrew and Sheau, 2013; Reichheld, 1996). This loyalty can attract customer re-buy and re-patronize the same brand product again, no matter of convenience or price. The brand loyalty is very important of the brand and company, it is because when the customer decision to buy this brand, they will often loyalty to that brand, keep buying on future, recommend to friends and choose this product to others, even other brand have more better features or lower price (Assael, 1991). So if no customers to support the brand, it will decrease the brand
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
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
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.
According to the brand value chain model, brand value based on customers is antecedent of brand value of the company (Keller and Lehmann, 2006). This relationship is determined by both rational and emotional evaluation to brands. In order to improve customer perception about brand value, brand managers should try to establish and maintain reciprocal interactions with
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.
Aaker (1991) defines brand loyalty as ‘the attachment that a customer has to a brand’. Two different levels of loyalty are classified: behavioural and cognitive loyalty (Keller, 1998). Behavioural loyalty can be indicated by a number of repeated purchases (Keller, 1998). Cognitive loyalty refers to the consumers’ intention to buy the brand as the first choice (Keller, 1998; Yoo and Donthu, 2001). Another indicator of loyalty is the customer’s willingness to pay higher price for a brand in comparison with another brand offering similar benefits (Aaker, 1996).
Engel and Blackwell (1982) regard brand loyalty as the customers’ rreaction to preference, attitude and behavior towards one or more brands in a same product category for a long-lasting time. Assael(1992) and Keller(1993) defined brand loyalty as a preferable response towards a brand which leads to the repetitive action of purchasing over a period of time. While Gremler(1995) includes both attitude and behaviour into the scale of measurement of loyalty. Blanchard and Galloway (1994) and Heskett et al (1990) believed that customers assess the value gained from a transaction or service, thus resulting in customer satisfaction.. It is also related to the value expected from the transactions with competitors (Zeithaml et al., 1990). The relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is the most significant one in the business market on account of the implications for companies’ marketing environment and financial situations (Gupta and Zeithaml, 2006). The current studies identify customer satisfaction as an attitude describing consumers’ perceptions towards their purchasing experiences (Anderson and Salisbury 2003) while customer loyalty, as a result of customer satisfaction, is identified as a potential behaviour to
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.
Study the influence of Service Quality with product leads to customer loyalty in Telecom Sector (Ufone)