MARKETING MANAGMENT

Marketing Management

Marketing Management

Brand loyalty and satisfaction

Customer loyalty is a major strategic objective and focus in marketing. It has been suggested that brand reputation is a major driver of customer loyalty, and hence companies seek to increase the equity of their brands. Quality affects not only customer satisfaction, but also the reputation of the brand. Thus, both brand reputation and customer satisfaction are important determinants of customer loyalty. The interaction between these two drivers of customer loyalty has, however, been neglected in the literature. Presents a theoretical model which integrates quality, brand reputation, customer satisfaction and loyalty. The model is tested in four industries, covering both business-to-business markets and private customer markets. The findings suggest that companies should monitor and improve both customers satisfaction and brand reputation. In situations where the intrinsic cues of the product or service are ambiguous, brand reputation is the strongest driver of customer loyalty compared with customer satisfaction. In fact, when the intrinsic cues are ambiguous, it is found that customer satisfaction is not driving customer loyalty.

Marketing scholars have long been interested in obtaining an understanding of the process by which strong brands influence consumer perception. There is a growing body of research on brand loyalty that focuses primarily on marketing mix variables in the context of specific goods or services. Although this research has enriched our understanding of brand loyalty, it is pointed out that customer-based brand research is still in a state of evolution. It has been shown, for instance, that cultural differences may have an effect on brand loyalty. By looking across two cultural contexts (China and South Korea), this research aims to add to extant research by investigating the role of potential cultural effects in brand loyalty formation.

Prior studies have mostly treated satisfaction as an independent variable and brand loyalty as a dependent variable with various mediating conceptualization. This study provides an overview of the various mediating roles of satisfaction proposed in extant research, and empirically evaluates different models characterizing the various conceptualizations. This research thus hopes to provide a holistic viewpoint of the role played by satisfaction in affecting brand loyalty.

Consistent with our viewpoint, many studies have highlighted the need for an improved understanding of customer loyalty (Richeld, 1996). On the one hand, there is a large body of literature on market orientation, which runs parallel to the concept of customer orientation defined in this study (for the definition of customer orientation, see the following section). On the other hand, it is important to note that most of the market orientation studies focus on antecedents and performance outcomes of market orientation, but do not focus on brand loyalty via satisfaction. The current study can thus contribute toward a better understanding of brand loyalty by also looking at the relationship between customer orientation and customer satisfaction.

General Marketing Theory

Marketing According to the American Heritage Dictionary, marketing defined is the act or process of buying and selling in a market, but what are some of the strategies that successful corporations use to gain an ...