Heart, head, and hand: a tripartite conceptualization, operationalization, and examination of brand loyalty

摘要

Customers' brand loyalty is a complex concept including cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dimensions. Most research on customers' brand loyalty focuses on conditions (based on relative levels of loyalty, attitudes, and behaviors) or stages of loyalty formation. This study focuses on measurement of the ways loyal customers are committed to the brand, using a tripartite conceptualization, that captures its emotional, cognitive, and habitual components termed heart, head, and hand loyalty, respectively. These components are operationalized into a 16-item scale, which was refined and tested in a series of four surveys that examined multiple product categories. The predictive validity of the scales is demonstrated through a latent class analysis that reveals multiple loyalty segments within each product category, each exhibiting differing combinations of heart, head, and hand loyalty. This work offers guidance to researchers who wish to purposefully measure multiple components of brand loyalty. It also provides managers with a tool to measure and understand the strength and types of loyalty their customers have toward their brand.