Exploring brand loyalty

Abstract

Brand loyalty has been an enduring topic of interest among both academics and managers. Customers can be loyal as well as fickle, and understanding, measuring and managing loyalty can be very complex but is imperative for marketers. The behavioural approach to understanding loyalty would involve research not only into purchase behaviour of consumers but also their psychographics. Is it the functional utility of a brand or its symbolic utility — that which boosts his ‘social ego’— that is driving the consumer? How sustainable is price-led loyalty boosted by frequent sales promotions and freebies? Can it prevent brand switching? What can companies do to understand customer expectations? In the intangible services category, what are the strategies marketers may adopt to build on the basic model of consumer behaviour with the distinctive stages of customer need, sources of information, consideration of alternatives, purchase and post purchase – much depends here on the building of relationships.

A study, illustrating the basic aspects of purchase involvement and brand loyalty issues, was conducted by the authors, probing into the expectations of loyal consumers in three product categories — non-durable consumer goods (soaps), durable categories (colour televisions) and services (domestic airlines). The findings revealed some dimensions, which can be extremely important for marketing managers in understanding their respective brand contexts and for charting out a broad tactical level brand plan for the coming years.