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Consumers' true brandloyalty: the central role ofcommitmentAbdelmajid Amine

Available online: 10 Jan 2011

To cite this article: Abdelmajid Amine (1998): Consumers' true brand loyalty: thecentral role of commitment, Journal of Strategic Marketing, 6:4, 305-319

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Consumers’ true brand loyalty: thecentral role of commitment

ABDELMAJID AMINEESA, Universite Paris Val de Marne, IRG Creteil and DMSP Dauphine Research Centers,3–5 Voie Felix Eboue, 94000 Creteil, France

In current highly com petitive environments, improving consumers’ loyalty to brandsallows firms to secure a com fortable long-term position in the m arket-place. Thisarticle aim s at placing the issue of brand loyalty within a larger perspective than a setof repetitive discrete transactions between consum ers and brands. Two differentapproaches for analysing brand loyalty are then discussed: the downstream one, basedon observing consistent purchases of a brand over a period of time and the upstreamapproach, which focuses on the m otives that are behind a repeat purchasing of abrand. The relevance of the latter approach is then shown by highlighting the crucialrole of the consumers’ com mitment to the brand in better understanding the loyaltyphenomenon. Therefore, our article proposes an integrative conceptual fram ework oftrue brand loyalty including its main cognitive and affective causes and effects.

KEYWORDS: Brand commitment; true brand loyalty; inertia repurchasing; conceptualframework

INTRODUCTION

The recent renewal of interest, both from the theoretical and practical marketing perspectives,in the ‘old’ concept of loyalty may be related to the increasing levels of uncertainty andcompetitiveness within most economic areas. Most markets are nowadays so segmented andoverstocked that, to sustain or enhance their positions, firms are obliged to focus more tightlyon their customer portfolio. In such a context, which is likely to last, the difficulty ofcapturing new segments of consumers’ emphasizes the need for preserving the present marketsthrough building or improving consumers loyalty to brands. Hence, maintaining consistentpurchase behaviour of a brand for a long time becomes a strategic goal for firms to preservetheir business and their profits.

The issue of brand loyalty became more crucial for national brands because of the harshcompetition due to private labels and generic products. The high performance of the latter onmain consumer goods markets (37% on average in 1995 in the French market-place)represents a serious threat to well-established brands. This market configuration contributes tore-establishing the concept of loyalty as the core of the marketing strategies of firms.Customers’ loyalty, which was already an important objective in managing brands, becomes acrucial condition for the national brands’ survival in particular.

Various reasons may explain consumers’ behaviour when they buy the same brandrepeatedly. This consistent behaviour may be due to some contingent factors such as store

JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC MARKETING 6 305–319 (1998)

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loyalty, lower price, narrow assortment, etc. It could inversely express an attachment to thisbrand or a conviction about its superiority compared to the competitive brands on functional,symbolic or psychological attributes. In fact, the consistent purchase of a brand depends onthe consumers’ perceived benefits related to keeping on this relationship with the brand(search effort reduction or increasing satisfaction).

Therefore, it seems necessary for practitioners as well as for academics to understand betterthe consumers’ relationships with the brands through relevant conceptualization andmeasurement of the loyalty construct. The literature on the brand loyalty issue distinguishestwo main approaches to define this construct: the behavioural one suggests that the repeatpurchasing of a brand over time by a consumer expresses their loyalty, while the attitudinalperspective assumes that consistent buying of a brand is a necessary but not sufficientcondition to ‘true’ brand loyalty and it must be complemented with a positive attitudetowards this brand to ensure that this behaviour will be pursued further.

The objective of this article is to demonstrate the relevance of the attitudinal view ofloyalty by highlighting the central role of commitment in better understanding the brandloyalty issue and to develop an integrative framework of the loyalty construct including itsmain cognitive as well as affective causes and effects. Our article is therefore organized tocorrespond with this proposed intent. We first discuss briefly the contribution of thedownstream approach of the brand loyalty issue and show its failure in operationalizing thisconstruct. Then we underline the relevance of the upstream approach in understandingconsumers’ true loyalty and stress the crucial role that brand commitment plays in this process.In the third section, we analyse the antecedents and consequences of true brand loyalty andpropose a conceptual framework to understand the loyalty phenomenon more fully. Finally,we point out some theoretical and managerial implications of our brand loyalty con-ceptualization and suggest some tracks for further research.

QUESTIONING THE VALIDITY OF THE DOWNSTREAM APPROACH TOBRAND LOYALTY

The downstream perspective of brand loyalty

Every marketer covets high loyalty and does everything possible to maintain it because thesuccess of a brand in the long term depends on its regular buyers. Academic research has alsoemphasized the importance of brand loyalty in the consumer decision process. The concept ofbrand loyalty has been understood for a long time as the act of consumers repeatedly buyingthe same brand. Many definitions were then proposed using various behavioural measuresinstead of trying to give a theoretical meaning to brand loyalty. The first studies on brandloyalty defined this concept as a sole brand purchase. This can be seen as the extreme form ofproportional loyalty where 100% of the purchases made by a consumer within a productcategory go to this brand. However, if this can be met within monopolistic markets or inless-frequently purchased goods (durable products), the rule is that markets are very oftenstructured around numerous brands which induce buyers to purchase more than a singlebrand even if they are loyal to one of them. Furthermore, some researchers used the mostpurchased brand in a product category rather than the unique brand as an indicator of loyalty(Cunningham, 1966). Moreover, other behavioural measures were proposed including thepurchase sequence (Kahn et al. 1986) or the period of time during which a brand is purchased(Krishnamurthi and Raj, 1991).

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Nevertheless, albeit useful and easy to measure through panel or scanning data, thisbehavioural approach of loyalty does not enable either researchers to differentiate the variousbuying situations and personal motives that may induce consumers’ to buy the same brand ormarketers to act to maintain consistent behaviours over time. Hence, this view of the brandloyalty issue is less explanatory and predictable than its large use might suggest. Thisconceptualization of loyalty through its consequences (downstream approach) presents thedisadvantage of not supplying any explanation of the consistent purchasing behavioursobserved. Moreover, Jacoby and Chestnut (1978), who reported more than 50 differentmeasures of brand loyalty, criticized the behavioural measures as being both static, whereasthe loyalty process is dynamic and lacking a strong conceptual basis.

Indeed, repeat brand purchasing can have numerous and different sources such as brandcommitment, limited number of brands proposed by the customary retail store, lowest (orhighest) brand pricing, store loyalty and absence of promotions on competitive brands.However, can we talk about brand loyalty in all of these situations?

Some previous studies (Jacoby and Kyner, 1973; Jacoby, 1975; Schiffman and Kanuk, 1987)provided a preliminary response to this question. They suggested that brand loyalty cannot bereduced to its behavioural dimension (repeat purchasing of the same brand). It is progressivelyadmitted that this concept cannot be measured only by observing consumer behaviour ortracking the purchase frequency of a brand via store scanning or panel data. It seems necessaryto be sure that this consistent purchasing is intentional and will be continued in the futurebefore concluding about effective brand loyalty.

The need to distinguish true brand loyalty from spurious loyalty

Hence, researchers’ attention was drawn to the conditions that lead to attitude-congruentbuying behaviour. Brand loyalty measures consequently evolved to include some attitudinalmeasurement tools besides the behavioural indicators. Day (1969) suggested a simultaneousconsideration of the consumers’ attitude towards the brand and their repeated buyingbehaviour to develop a composite index for loyalty. The attitudinal component here refers toa strong internal disposition of the consumer to continue buying the same brand. Thisdimension was operationalized through the measurement of the strength of consumers’attitudes towards the brand which induce resistance to brand substitution when somesituational changes occur in the customary selling conditions.

More recently, Agrawal (1996) operationalized the strength of the attitudinal component ofbrand loyalty through the relative price differential which is necessary for consumers’ toswitch to a competitive brand (given the habitual price levels of the brands studied). Thisprice differential represents an obstacle built in front of the consumer to test the intensity oftheir dispositional basis for repeated purchase of a particular brand. If they intend to shift to acheaper brand, their attitude strength towards the usual brand is low and vice versa.Nevertheless, this operationalization of the intensity of brand attitude by Agrawal (1996)presented some limits, such as price changes over time or from store to store, which do notallow the precise definition of a fair price reference and, hence, the extent of loyalty to thebrand.

Even if the operationalization of the attitudinal component of loyalty meets various goals, itnow seems clear that the entire brand loyalty phenomenon cannot be appraised if thetraditional definition of loyalty is not extended over the behavioural area to include an

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attitudinal dimension. In their attempt to model customer loyalty, Dick and Basu (1994)noted that both a strong positively valenced attitude and repeat patronage are required forloyalty. Hence, a consumer is viewed as really loyal when either their relative attitude towardsthe brand is highly favourable or the latter is clearly differentiated from other competitors aswell, as they consistently purchased the same brand. This definition of the attitudinal bond tothe brand joins the pattern proposed in more recent works to describe the notion of brandcommitment (Baldinger and Rubinson, 1996; Samuelsen and Sandvick, 1997). Thoseconsidered as highly loyal consumers’ to a particular brand are only those who purchase itrepeatedly and are strongly committed to it.

Bloemer and Kasper (1993) highlighted the theoretical and managerial implications of usingthis attitudinal bond to the brand to distinguish between spurious loyalty (or inertia) and trueloyalty (see Fig. 1). This differentiation makes it essential for the retailer or producer to knowwhether the consistent purchasing behaviour may be pursued further (true loyalty) or may bestopped when a change in the store assortment or the selling conditions occurs (inertia).

Furthermore, East (1997) noted that consistent purchases will be made on the basis ofhabits or routines that are formed to enable the consumer to cope more effectively with timepressures and search efforts. Inertia repeat purchasing of a brand appears then to be a habitualbehaviour to reduce both mental (attributes comparison) and physical search efforts (storeattendance). This spurious loyalty occurs when several brands are approximately equal andinduces some buying habits that indeed remain unstable because they require no change inthe selling conditions. Consequently, consumer loyalty may readily break down when there isa change in the habitual supply conditions, encouraging brand switching.

Figure 1 also shows that habitual behaviours may take a form other than inertia repeatpurchasing: true brand loyalty. The difference is that the former repeat purchasing behaviourdepends on the decision process followed in the initial purchase. True brand loyalty mostlyexists in highly involving conditions and tends to explain the behavioural relationshipsbetween the consumer and the brand through the attitudinal dimension of loyalty (orcommitment). Hence, consistent with numerous researchers that were inspired by the originalwork of Jacoby and Kyner (1973, p. 2), we view true brand loyalty as ‘an effective buyingbehaviour of a particular brand (and not only an intention to buy it), repeated over time (itsbuying proportion exceeding 50% of the purchases made within a product category) andreinforced with a strong commitment to that brand’.

In summary, we can state that to overlap the whole phenomenon of consumer brandloyalty, the consistent purchase of a brand must be strengthened with a positive attitudetowards it. Encompassing this attitudinal bond to the brand, besides repeated patronage, in the

ConsistentPurchasingBehaviour

True BrandLoyalty

InertiaRepurchasing

FIGURE 1. Differentiation of main consistent purchasing behaviours.

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conceptualization of the loyalty issue, allows us to ensure an appropriate distinction betweentrue brand loyalty and other habitual buying behaviours.

The behavioural approach of the loyalty issue, albeit useful, fails to explain the factorsunderlying repeat purchase of brands. The attitudinal view, through the notion of brandcommitment, seems to be more relevant for distinguishing between true brand loyalty andother consistent buying behaviours.

THE RELEVANCE OF THE UPSTREAM APPROACH TO BRANDLOYALTY

The upstream approach to brand loyalty is based on identifying the motives behind true brandloyalty. The central role of commitment in the upstream approach is analysed first and thenthe benefits of including brand commitment to understand the loyalty phenomenon better areunderlined.

The central role of brand com m itm ent in the loyalty phenom enon

In the behavioural approach, the stochastic models used to measure and predict consumerloyalty admit that previous purchase patterns are sufficient to ensure consistent futurebehaviours. This perspective is open to criticism because different motives could be at theorigin of a repeat purchase behaviour and, depending on these reasons, the purchasing of thebrand may or may not be pursued over time. The notion of commitment is then central tounderstanding better the mental processes underlying the repeat purchasing of a brand,particularly by distinguishing between a highly probable pursuing behaviour (true brandloyalty) and a less probable one (inertia). According to Jacoby and Kyner (1973) ‘. . . thenotion of commitment provides the essential basis for distinguishing between brand loyaltyand other forms of repeat purchasing behaviour’. They completed this statement by explainingthat ‘. . . the concept of commitment holds promise for assessing the relative degrees of brandloyalty’.

It is now generally accepted that consistent purchasing behaviour could have two mainexplanations. It may be due to the consumers’ tendency to reduce or avoid search effortsbecause the product is perceived as low involving. Then there is a high probability ofinterrupting this consistent buying and switching to another brand at the first opportunity orinducement to do so (price increasing, new brand launching or brand out of stock). Thesesituations describe a spurious customer loyalty to the brand. A consistent behaviour may alsoresult from a commitment to the brand enabling the customer to resist changing the brand.Samuelsen and Sandvik (1997) stated that commitment describes bonds (or attitude strength)between the customer and a particular brand thus extending the meaning of loyalty over thesimple repeat purchasing of a brand (behavioural phenomenon). This commitment can havetwo main causes: affective reasons such as attachment or emotional feelings towards the brand(affective commitment) or cognitive motives such as perceived risk or perceived variations inperformance among the competitive brands (calculative commitment).

Originally, the distinction of commitment types (affective and calculative) found its roots inorganizational behaviour research. Affective commitment expresses ‘the extent to which anindividual likes to maintain their relationship with an object (here a brand) on the basis oftheir affective attachment to and identification with this object’. This kind of commitment is

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not due to an evaluation of the brand on the disaggregate level of its attributes. It comes froma holistic judgement of that brand in terms of liking or attachment. Consequently, one mayconclude that affective commitment tends to reduce the customers’ propensity to substituteanother brand for the habitual one. Calculative commitment allows the consumer to maintaintheir consistent purchasing behaviour as long as the benefits attached to this brand exceed thecosts of switching to another brand. This relationship is based mainly upon acognitive=psychological evaluation of the brand (the more secure) which implies that theconsumer appears as seemingly loyal for opportunistic reasons.

These two kinds of commitment contribute to differentiating the motives underlying repeatpurchasing behaviour, thus improving our knowledge about the mental processes that occurwith any consistent behaviour. Nevertheless, even if the dimensionality of the commitmentconstruct is widely accepted among marketing researchers, essentially, given its variousantecedents, affective and calculative commitments could have various effects on the durationof the relationship between consumers’ and brands. One can hypothesize that the former typeof commitment may ensure a longer term consistent behaviour rather than the latter becauseit depends less on contingent factors which could interrupt the purchasing of the usual brand.The emotional motives of brand loyalty are more likely to result in stable and enduringrelationships between consumers’ and brands.

The contribution of the upstream approach to the brand loyaltyissue

While the downstream approach to brand loyalty is mostly interested in describing andcounting out the consumers’ repeat purchasing of a brand, the crucial task in the upstreamapproach is to discover what are the different motives for consumers to remain loyal. Themarketing literature review reveals different potential sources, for consumer consistentpurchasing behaviour that can be classified into three groups: cognitive motives and affectivesources, which are both based on particular care for the brand as a target of commitment onthe one hand and a kind of haphazardly repeated choice of a brand due to a lack ofalternative choices, store loyalty or lower prices on the other. Consequently, the latter casecannot be understood as a real form of loyalty, because it does not satisfy the first conditionof brand loyalty, that is a ‘biased=non-random behavioural response’ (Jacoby and Kyner 1973,p. 2).

To illustrate these situations, let us analyse three seemingly loyal consumers’ with consistentpurchasing behaviour. Each one of them is assumed to buy brand X with the sameproportion of purchases. From the downstream perspective, they can all be considered asequally loyal to the brand, whereas the upstream approach may differentiate them on the basisof the motives behind their repeat buying of the same behaviour. From the latter view, threedifferent profiles may be identified. The first consumer can be emotionally committed to thisbrand because they enjoy, for hedonistic or symbolic reasons, their relationship with it (brandliking/ attachment). The second individual may be cognitively committed to the brandbecause they perceive that choosing this particular brand is less risky than buying another one(costly brand change). The last consumer can be mainly moved by search effort avoidance ora lack of alternatives without any care for the brand itself (inertia).

The first situation described above is probably the most secure perspective for marketersbecause it ensures a long-term consistent purchasing behaviour. The second case suggests a

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moderately comfortable perspective for the firm due to its opportunistic orientation, whileconvenient repeat purchasing of a brand may be sustained only if the market-place structureremains unchanged (e.g. number of main competitive brands and brands differentiation). Thelast situation is the least reliable and secure because the seeming consumer loyalty is in fact aspurious one which may induce them to turn their back on the habitual brand at the firstavailable opportunity.

True brand loyalty is obviously more than consistent purchase behaviour. It additionallyincludes an attitudinal component operationalized through the notion of commitment to thisbrand. Commitment appears as a key variable for customer retention in the long-termperspective.

ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF TRUE BRAND LOYALTY

Among the antecedents of brand loyalty proposed in the marketing literature, we candistinguish two main types of loyalty cause: indirect sources, which influence brand loyaltythrough some mediating variables (involvement and satisfaction) and some direct antecedents,which affect brand loyalty thoroughly (perceived differences among alternatives, perceivedrisk, brand sensitivity and brand attachment=liking).

Nevertheless, prior to analysing indirect and direct motives to consumers’ commitment tobrands, it is useful to recall that a preliminary general condition to true brand loyalty mustalways be implicitly met: the market shares structure. The role of this factor, also called theperceived extent of choice, was emphasized by Raj (1985) who showed that brand loyalty ina product class varies with the number of significant competing brands within this category.When there are only few brands under consideration within a product class, the loyalty levelautomatically increases due to the high probability of purchasing a specific brand. In theextreme case, when a customer buys the sole perceived significant product or brand, thisbehaviour cannot be considered as an expression of true loyalty because no other seriousalternative is available. Consequently, a narrow choice in a product category, seen in terms ofsignificant brands’ market shares or brands’ popularity, spuriously improves repeat purchasingbehaviour. This consistent brand buying may express more inertia or constrained repeatedbehaviour rather than loyalty with commitment to that brand.

Indirect sources of true brand loyalty

Two main indirect sources of true brand loyalty may intervene: a high level of involvementin the product category and the consumers’ satisfaction with the brand consequent to itsprevious consumption or use. These two factors appear more as some necessary but notsufficient conditions to true brand loyalty.

Consumer involvement level is often presented in the marketing literature as an antecedentof brand loyalty. Involvement must be understood here as personal relevance of a product orits perceived importance to someone. Several studies have noted that high involvement in aproduct class may enhance consumer loyalty (as repeat purchase behaviour) to a brand in thesame category (Robertson, 1976; Thompson, 1980; Traylor, 1981; Assael, 1992). Neverthe-less, this conclusion is based mainly on some theoretical assumptions and has weak empiricalsupport. Moreover, according to some recent studies (Walker and Knox, 1997; Amine, 1998),it seems that the strength of the relationship between these two variables is only low to

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moderate even if statistically significant. Thus, although frequently considered as a cause ofconsumer loyalty, the involvement construct appears more as being indirectly related to brandloyalty probably because it operates at the aggregate level of product categories, whereas theconcept of loyalty concerns a more disaggregate level of brands.

To illustrate this situation, it is reasonable to imagine that consumers could be highlyinvolved in a product category (e.g. wine), without being necessarily loyal to a specific brand,because the purchase is motivated by hedonistic or experiential reasons which may lead tovariety-seeking behaviour rather than to loyalty to a particular brand. Brand switchingdepends here more on consumption situations (such as the sort of meal to be eaten or theabsence/ presence of guests) than on involvement level. However, the relationship betweenlow involvement and a lack of true loyalty to the brand is probably more realistic. A recentempirical work (Amine, 1998) showed that consumers exhibit low brand loyalty when theyhave low involvement with the product category. This finding provides reasonable supportfor the proposition that low brand loyalty is likely to occur when consumers’ are less involvedin the product category. Then, low product involvement seems to be a sufficient conditionfor stating that a consumer cannot be committed to a brand because they have no strongbeliefs or feelings about it.

The notion of satisfaction is also considered here as an indirect source of brand loyalty, fortwo reasons. Although the marketing literature admits the assumption that satisfaction islinked to loyalty, the earlier concept seems to explain consumers’ buying habits including allof their consistent purchasing behaviours (van Birgelen et al., 1997). Satisfaction appears thenas a variable that cannot discriminate between true brand loyalty and inertia repeat purchasing.Moreover, some brand-switching behaviours take place even if the consumer is satisfied withtheir habitual brand. It is the case of exploratory behaviour, such as variety seeking, whichexpresses the consumers’ tendency to switch from one brand to another for other motives(e.g. need for novelty and change or satiation) than dissatisfaction (McAlister and Pessemier,1982). However, because dissatisfaction is a sufficient reason to break the consumers’consistent purchasing behaviour, we assume that it is relevant to analyse satisfaction as anindirect source of true brand loyalty which may interact with other variables (brand sensitivityand brand attachment) to influence consumer loyalty.

Direct cognitive and affective antecedents of true brand loyalty

Besides involvement and satisfaction variables, marketing literature review reveals some otherpotential sources of consumer brand loyalty. Of these antecedents to brand loyalty, fourfactors seem to be relevant to our analysis because they distinguish between true and spuriousloyalty cases and are more tightly related to the brand loyalty concept. All of these factors,namely perceived differences about alternatives, perceived risk, brand sensitivity and brandattachment=liking, have in common the fact that the brand is at the centre of the consistentbehaviour they produce. They are not only expected to influence brand loyalty but alsoprobably intervene to moderate the relationships between the latter and consumerinvolvement and between loyalty and satisfaction level. This assumption seems so probablistic,as we showed earlier, that true brand loyalty is indirectly related either to consumerinvolvement or satisfaction.

Perceived differences about the competitive brands depend on the consumers’ familiarity orexpertise with the product category, which enables them to detect more subtle differences

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among the brands on the basis of functional or psychological attributes. Brand loyalty appearsthen as a mechanism to reduce the ambiguity and complexity of the purchase decision due tosubtle and obvious variations in brand performance. Martin and Goodell (1991) stressed therole of this variable as a mediating factor of the relationship between the involvement natureof the product and consumer loyalty to a particular brand. Furthermore, the concept ofperceived differences among the brands is supposed to influence the calculative type of brandcommitment.

These perceived variations in performance among the brands generally result in riskperception associated with the choice task. The bigger these perceived differences the moreuncertain the decision result. Roselius (1971) showed that brand loyalty is often used byconsumers’ to reduce their perceived risk, which covers two components: the probability ofmaking a wrong choice and the importance of the negative consequences of this wrongchoice. However, even if the brand is the source of the consistent behaviour induced byperceived risk, the commitment to this brand seems more determined by cognitive (brandattributes) or psychological (social consequences) reasons than by affective motives such asbrand attachment=liking. Consequently, the two facets of risk tend to explain the consumers’calculative commitment to a particular brand.

A third source of brand loyalty is represented by the concept of brand sensitivity, which isconsidered in the literature as a mediating variable between involvement and loyalty (Laurentand Kapferer, 1985). Brand sensitivity represents a psychological variable describing theconsumers’ tendency to use brand information as a determining criterion in the choiceprocess. Thus, one can expect that, when a consumer is highly involved in a product classand is strongly brand sensitive, it is extremely probable that they will be loyal to a particularbrand. Brand sensitivity is consequently assumed as having an influence on both calculative(perceived differences about brand attributes) and affective (holistic evaluation) commitment.

The last factor that could explain consumers’ loyalty better is their affective commitment toa brand. This variable results in a holistic judgement of the brand and expresses positivefeelings and affective attachment to this brand (e.g. like–dislike). This affective bond to thebrand expresses consumers brand liking or attachment which is defined as ‘an emotionalfeeling that a consumer develops towards a specific brand which expresses their psychologicalcloseness to that brand. It consists in a holistic or aggregate judgement of the brandindependently from its functional and instrumental attributes’. This affective bond to thebrand is supposed to be independent from a specific purchasing situation and may explain theaffective brand commitment type.

Brand sensitivity tends to be a common trait in understanding and explaining consumertrue brand loyalty. This variable seems to interact with the different cognitive and affectivemotives to influence the consumers’ commitment to a brand (either calculative or affective).

Som e consequences of true brand loyalty

Two major consequences of brand loyalty on consumers’ attitudes and behaviours have beensuggested in previous studies: the consumers’ confidence in the brand and positive word ofmouth communication or brand support. These variables are seemingly correlated to eachother, so that when a consumer is confident in a brand to which they are committed, theytend to defend it from negative opinions or rumours and incite=require others to buy it.

The consumers’ confidence in a brand allows them to maintain greatly their propensity to

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buy the habitually purchased brand and to resist brand switching even if the product becomesdeficient for a while, less competitive or is a target of negative rumours. More loyalconsumers are less tempted to turn their backs on their habitual brands as a consequence ofsmall price changes in favour of competitive brands or due to a temporary alteration of thebrand’s image (Agrawal, 1996). This phenomenon describes an asymmetric substitution infavour of the brands with high loyalty levels in the market-place and indicates the potentialtrust stock that these brands may benefit from. The importance of the trust construct hasalready been demonstrated in sustaining vendor–supplier relations (Chow and Holden, 1996).We expect that, when applied to the consumer–brand relationship, the trust in the purchasedbrand may be viewed as a leverage of its credibility, which in return may reinforce theconsumers’ repeat buying behaviour.

As a consequence of a high level of confidence in a brand, true loyal consumers’ maydevelop positive word of mouth communication (or brand support) about the brand they arecommitted to. One could expect that they prescribe it to others and induce new consumers’(family and friends) to try it, resulting in a widening of loyal customers’. Furthermore,committed consumers’ defend their brand from negative opinions or rumours and represent astable hard core of consumers’ which can comfort the firm during crises. Consumer brandsupport is supposed to be influenced (reinforced) by consumer satisfaction from pastexperiences with the brand. People may strongly defend a brand and may advise theirrelatives to buy it when they are highly satisfied with it (from utilitarian, symbolic andpsychological viewpoints). Hence, brand support appears as a key variable in building and=ormaintaing the popularity of a brand.

We can now propose the following conceptual framework which includes the main causesand consequences of true brand loyalty, as depicted in Fig. 2.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS AND RESEARCH PROPOSITIONS

Our article shows the broader scope of the upstream approach to the brand loyalty issue aswell as the relevance of the notion of commitment to the brand in understanding better theloyalty phenomenon as it is shown in our proposed conceptual model.

Brand commitment should be viewed as a long-run end pursued to achieve long-runcompetitive advantage. Hence, maintaining regular customers, which is a strategic goal forfirms, requires ensuring the consumer commitment to the brand, to make their purchasepatterns less casual and more predictable. Baldinger and Rubinson’s (1996) findings showedthat brand commitment is a good predictor of loyal consumers’ and positively influences thecustomer retention rate. Thus, even if a brand with a high market share is more likely tohave more loyal consumers’ than a small brand, its propensity to keep them in the long termdepends on its ability to make them strongly committed to it. Thus, each firm may try todevelop or reinforce the consumers’ attitudinal bonds to its brands through marketing actions.In particular, based on our framework, the task of managing loyalty could be performed byturning communication efforts into cognitive or affective sources of brand commitment.

Promotional efforts are then likely to be used as a strategic tool to improve customers’commitment to the brand and therefore enhance their retention over time (Martin andGoodell, 1991). For speciality or shopping goods which need extended decision processes,these efforts might be employed in raising cognitive motives for brand loyalty bycommunicating about the potential negative consequences of a poor choice if the consumeris tempted to switch brands. Hence, increasing the perceived risk associated with brand

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substitution is a first way of making consumers’ more committed (cognitively) with brands.Advertising efforts could also focus on brand-specific attributes to magnify the perceiveddifferences in performance between the customary brand and competitors, thereby enhancingthe loyalty status of customers’.

High involvement High satisfaction

Perceived

Differences

among the

brands

Perceived

Risk

Brand

Sensitivity

Brand

Liking or

Attachment

CalculativeCommitment

AffectiveCommitment

Consistent Purchasing Behaviour

Positive

Word of Mouth

Communication

(Brand Support)

Consumer© s

Confidence

in the brand

TRUE

BRAND

LOYALTY

CONSEQUENCES

ANTECENDENTS

FIGURE 2. Conceptual framework of true brand loyalty construct.

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The communication strategy may also aim at activating affective sources of true loyalty forself-expressive or badge value products. Broad promotional efforts can then contribute tobuilding or improving brand liking by creating and promoting a friendly, pleasant and kindlyimage for the brand. This may occur through advertising investment to enhance thecongruence between the brand’s personality and the consumers’ self-image. The notion ofbrand personality or image, which expresses the values and status of the brand (Aaker, 1997),is used by consumers’ as an extended self to manifest their own personalities and values toother people (Belk, 1988). The notion of congruence expresses a psychological closeness (interms of similarity or complementarity) between consumers’ and brand’s identities. Thetighter is this proximity the more attached to the brand the consumer is. So, the diagnosis ofconsumer–brand congruence, based on their shared values, enables an understanding of thepsychological associations between these two entities. Hence, creative executional devices mayhelp to enhance the perceived psychological closeness between individuals and the brandresulting in a commitment to the latter for emotional reasons.

The mere implications of the commitment concept in the consumer–brand relationshipdeveloped above are consistent with the specific positioning strategies for managing brandimages proposed by Park et al. (1986). These authors argued that brand image managementmay focus on its functional or symbolic distinctive characteristics and should not only helpestablish this brand’s position and, therefore, enhance its market performance, but may alsomaintain this image over time. A brand with a main functional dimension is designed to solveconsumption-related problems whereas a brand with a symbolic concept is designed toassociate the consumer with a desired group, role or self-image. The former brand imagestrategy should be used to enhance cognitive commitment whereas the latter might beemployed to reinforce affective or emotional commitment. However, to be durably successful,these brand management strategies require that functional as well as symbolic conceptscontinue to be valued by target customers, otherwise the firm might reposition the brand inorder to preserve consumers’ commitment. To protect this meaningful consumer–brand bondin the market-place, Fournier and Yao (1997) went further and proposed replacing the brandloyalty issue within a broader relationship perspective.

Furthermore, Blackston (1992) noted that to earn consumers’ commitment and trust, thebrand or the corporation as a whole must send some signs that they have listened to themand responded suitably. Direct marketing provides the brand (or the firm) with the possibilityof manifesting its interest and awareness to its clients’ needs through means of (relationship)marketing to consumers’ one at a time. Data-based marketing is then very useful in analysingprevious and ongoing consumers’ relationships with the brands and identifying those who areworthy and=or vulnerable to the marketing efforts of the firms.

In summary, we offer some theoretical explanations and managerial implications for apowerful and interesting phenomenon: true brand loyalty. Our conceptual frameworkrepresents an attempt to produce a comprehensive view of the concept of (true) brand loyaltyby distinguishing between direct versus indirect and cognitive versus affective motives forbrand loyalty. It points to the crucial role of brand commitment in explaining the long-termorientation in the relationship between consumers and brands. However, the task of empiricalvalidation of the links between this construct and its causes and effects, which are shown inour framework, are left to future research.

Moreover, some additional work on the commitment issue is quite worthwhile because thispattern offers a benchmark to those managers that are concerned with building loyaltyprogrammes and provides more useful information for researchers for understanding better the

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correlates of loyalty with other concepts and consumer characteristics. In particular, tworesearch directions seem promising to us: (1) measurement of true brand loyalty and (2)broadening the scope of the loyalty topic to encompass corporate entities (firms or stores).

The first research task involves the development or improvement of reliable and validmeasurement tools particularly for the commitment construct. The indexes proposed in theliterature operationalize this attitudinal bond by setting some obstacles or difficulties toprevent consumers’ acquiring their usual brand. These obstacles introduce some temporarychanges in the customary selling conditions of a brand (habitual brand out of stock orpromotional effort on competitive brands) to check individual tendencies to remain loyal orto substitute brands. Nevertheless, what is indeed tested by so doing is the intention of theconsumer to continue their purchasing behaviour of a particular brand through visiting otherstores or delaying the product purchase. However, according to a recent study carried out byFitzsimons and Morwitz (1996), only a small part of consumers’ intentions are actuallyconverted into effective acts. Hence, one can appreciate the risk of trusting completely inresults based on the intentions to buy. Thus, what is needed to operationalize the true brandloyalty construct better is to dissociate behavioural effects from attitudinal motives (eithercognitive or affective) by developing distinct measures for repeated buying behaviour (throughpanel data) and brand commitment levels (through attitudinal scales).

The second research area deals with the opportunity of extending our conceptual findingsto the case of corporations. In addition to its relevance at the brand level, the upstreamapproach of loyalty and the active role that commitment plays in the consumer–brandrelationship may have great potential for explanation of the links between customers’ andfirms or retail stores viewed as corporate brands. The marketing literature shows thatcustomers’ loyalty to stores or firms is more frequently related to their perceived images.Hirschman (1981) showed that when customers’ have a favourable store image this leads themto increase their repeat store frequentation. In this customer to store relationship bothcognitive and affective factors are likely to be crucial in the determination of the overall storeimage. Therefore, the potential ability of commitment to explain consumers’ attitudes towardsthe store as well as their repeat patronage seems very significant. Our conceptual frameworkshould act as a starting point for future efforts on this topic by transposing those antecedentsand consequences of commitment that seem appropriate to the case of corporate entities(satisfaction with the store’s services, perceived differences among stores, store attachment andstore trustworthiness). In addition, some other factors, such as the store’s overall perceivedprototypicality, which may influence consumers’ frequentation behaviour (Ward et al., 1992),should be included as potential sources in analysis of the store loyalty issue.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges helpful comments from Guy Cornette and theanonymous reviewers of the journal.

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