Impact of Brand Commitment on Loyalty to Retail Service Brands, The

Abstract

This paper incorporates the developing material part of literature in relationship marketing to the research of brand loyalty. Relationship marketing literature has established that customer commitment is a central, composite construct consisting of at least an affective composing and a continuance component. This application of mind examined the extent to which affective and continuance commitment be under the orders of as mediators of the brand satisfaction-loyalty intentions relationship. The application of mind found that, in two retail service brand settings, the sum of two units components of commitment fully mediate the relationship between brand satisfaction and the couple repurchase intentions and advocacy intentions. In addition, the close attention found that affective commitment to the brand was powerfully and positively related to the couple repurchase intentions for the brand and willingness to act as an advocate upon behalf of the brand. Continuance commitment was at best solitary weakly but positively related to repurchase intentions, on the contrary negatively related to advocacy intentions for the brand.

JEL Classification: M3

Key words: Brand loyalty; customer commitment; relationship marketing; retailing

R?©sum?©

Le pr?©sent article combine le publications de plus en plus nombreuses relatives au marketing cibl?© et l'?©tude de la fid?©lit?© ?  la marque. Le publications relatives au marketing cibl?© ont ?©tabli que l'engagement du client est un conception central et complexe qui comprend au moins une composante affective et une composante de continuation. Cette ?©tude examine dans quelle mesure l'engagement affectif et l'engagement de continuation m?©diatisent la satisfaction par rapport ?  la marque-rapport d'intentions de fid?©lit?©. L'?©tude r?©v??le que dans deux contexte de service de d?©tail de marque, le deux composantes d'engagement m?©diatisent compl??tement le rapport entre la satisfaction par rapport ?  la marque d'une part, le intentions de rachat et le intentions de promotion d'autre part. Par ailleurs, l'engagement affectif ?  la marque est fortement et positivement reli?© aux intentions de rachat de la marque et ?  la volont?© de recommander et de d?©fendre la marque. L'engagement de continuation est au mieux reli?© uniquement, faiblement mais positivement aux intentions de rachat. Cependant, il est n?©gativement reli?© aux intentions de recommandation pour la marque.

Mot cl?© : Fid?©lit?© ?  la marque; engagement du client; mercatique relationnelle; vente au d?©tail

The investigation of brand loyalty continues to be a central issue in the marketing management literature (Brown Kozinets, & Sherry, 2003; Dillon, Madden, Kirmani, & Mukherjee, 2001; Fournier, 1998; McAlexander, Kim, & Roberts, 2003; Odin, Odin, & Valette-Florence, 2001 ; severe & Hammond, 2004; Yi & Jeon 2003; Yi & La, 2004) Brand loyalty has had a rich tradition of research in the field and the erect is sometimes identified as having a manifold mixture of attitudinal and behavioural ultimate parts (Jacoby & Kyner, 1973; Oliver, 1999) Others argue that brand loyalty should be regarded as the puissance of the relationship between an attitudinal evaluation and a behavioural intention (Dick & Basu, 1994) Research in the broad area of brand loyalty has expanded to include topics like as consumer loyalty to loyalty programs as they impact sales horizontals for the brand (Yi & Jeon) the issues of consumer affiliation with a brand community upon their loyalty to the brand (McAlexander, Schouten & Koenig, 2002) the iconic nature of brands (Holt 2003) and the financial events of brand-loyalty (Anderson & Mittal, 2000) Increasingly, we are recognizing that there are composite relational processes behind an extremity state where the customer is viewed as being loyal to a particular brand (Odin et al., 2001; Yi & La). Indeed, brand loyalty might be viewed as a special case of relationship marketing, where the consumer has a significant psychological attachment to the brand entity consum (Fournier, 1998)

Over the past decade, marketing scholars have make knowned a large body of literature in the field of relationship marketing (Bendapudi & Berry, 1997; Sheth & Parvatiyar, 2002) For the greatest in quantity part, this literature has exhibited in two areas of study: business-to-business exchanges and consumer services. newly researchers have started to investigate the relational variables that lie at the heart of a consumer-brand relationship (Chaudhuri & Holbrook 2002; Fournier, 1998) This paper will build specifically upon the relationship marketing literature to identify the amplitude to which customer commitment to the brand influences the relationship between consumer evaluations of the brand and consumer loyalty intentions towards the brand. The retail service brand has been prefered as the focus of this close attention because of the increasing importance of the brand in retail services (Berry, 2000) The retail brand is a ubiquitous feature of the retail landscape in North America (Kozinets, Sherry, DeBerry-Spence, Duhachek, Nuttavuthisit, & Storm, 2002) Increasingly, customers find it difficult to differentiate between the retail store and the retailer's brand (Berry, 2000) Fournier (1998) argues that consumer perceive as if they are in relationships with the brands they spend and this is particularly real in the context of consumer relationships with retail brands. For example, Arnold, Kozinets, and Handelman (2001) base that Wal-Mart incorporates the identification-based connection that consumer have with the retail brand in its print advertising efforts. Berry (2000) notices that some widely seen retail brands, Starbucks Coffee for example, make robust emotional connections with their customers. Consumers' feelings about their relationships with brands may well explain the conditions that we consider brand loyalty. In order to understand the nature of consumer-brand relationships, it is necessary to understand the basics of consumption relationships.