The dimensions of brand loyalty and their relationship to brand behaviors and marketing actions.

摘要

The success of brands in the marketplace depends critically on the level of brand loyalty the brand is able to engender. In the academic literature it is well accepted that brand loyalty is a concept that should be understood in terms of its behavioral and attitudinal dimensions. However, much of the recent brand loyalty research, with its reliance on scanner data, has failed to incorporate the attitudinal dimension of brand loyalty. Thus much of the body of knowledge about the relationship of brand loyalty and consumer behavior and how marketing actions differentially impact the behavior of different loyalty segments is subject to qualification.; This study looks at how the brand behaviors of different loyalty segments change in response to various marketing actions, specifically sales promotion actions in the form of price changes and coupons. The four brand behaviors considered in the study are brand choice, purchase quantity, purchase timing, and brand consumption. The dissertation merges the attitudinal and behavioral approaches to brand loyalty. This merger is made possible by our ability to combine survey data (from which we gather brand attitudes) and scanner data (from which we gather purchase information) from shoppers in the loyalty program of a regional supermarket chain.; We view the marketing actions of pricing and couponing as communication instruments used by marketers and use Petty and Cacioppo's (1986) Elaboration Likelihood Model to hypothesize that attitudinal loyals will be more price sensitive than behavioral loyals and that behavioral loyals will be more coupon sensitive than attitudinal loyals. We find support for our hypotheses for choice and purchase quantity behaviors. Our hypotheses with respect to purchase timing and consumption rate behavior were not as well supported.; Contributions of the dissertation include an understanding of the role of the two dimensions of brand loyalty in affecting consumer behavior, which should enable managers to more efficiently tailor their marketing actions based on the composition of their target market and the behavior they desire to evoke.