How Attitudes Translate to Brand Loyalty: Examining the Antecedents and Consequences of Attitudinal and Behavioral Brand Loyalty

Abstract

Brand loyalty has always been a complex phenomenon and the presence of digital technology is making it more challenging as consumers are well informed and demanding than ever.  In such dynamic and challenging environment business firms should include the factors that help creating the brand loyalty. Little consideration has been made to “a detailed model” of brand loyalty, most of the earlier researches while examining the antecedents of brand loyalty have pin pointed few variables to explain the whole phenomenon. This research is an effort to investigate and overcome this vacuity. The reason of conducting this study is to inspect brand loyalty in depth and suggesting a detailed model of brand loyalty along with all of its possible antecedents and mediator. Both distinct elements of Brand loyalty are investigated together that is “attitudinal brand loyalty and behavioral brand loyalty”. All the antecedents of brand loyalty are adopted from existing marketing research literature, which included “Brand Commitment, Customer Satisfaction and Brand Perceived Risk”. Most important findings of this study are a) attitudinal brand loyalty impact positively on behavioral brand loyalty b) the effect of Brand Perceived Risk on behavioral brand loyalty is not direct, that is it effect through attitudinal brand loyalty. c) Attitudinal Brand loyalty mediates the impact among brand commitment and customer satisfaction on behavioral brand loyalty. All the findings are consistent with the proposed model. 450 questionnaires were circulated amongst the Karachi residents, out of which 389 responded. Data is examined with the help of SPSS.  The study concluded the potential antecedents Customer Satisfaction and Brand Commitment as significant construct in brand loyalty as they have strong relation with attitudinal and behavioral brand loyalty. Results show a strong relationship among attitudinal brand loyalty and behavioral brand loyalty. This proposed brand loyalty model will be helpful for the Business firms.