Course of Independent Study

Indian Institute of Management Tiruchirappalli

Course of Independent Study “Identifying Factors Contributing To Brand Loyalty In The Context Of Consumer-Brand Relationships”

Faculty Guide

Prof. Hari Sreekumar

Submitted By

Isha Suman-1101015 Sathiesh G-1101035


ACKNOWLEDGMENT We would like to thank Prof. Hari Sreekumar for his continuous support and motivation during this course. He helped us in making our concepts clear and conducting primary research within the limits of time. We are obliged to him for the learning we developed during the course of our project.

Isha Suman Sathiesh G

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ABSTRACT This study explores about the various attributes that are related to a brand and customer’s perception about the brand. A broad literature review has been done on several papers for subsequent understanding of the several aspects pertaining to a brand. After gaining extensive information on the different characteristics relating to the brand, a research was conducted on a set of diverse respondents, who differ in the socio-economic classes and from different demographics. The research gave some profound thoughts, some validating the inferences found from the earlier papers. The research helps to explore the inherent drivers that influence a customer while buying because understanding a customer is essential for a brand to strengthen its bond with him and build a stronger image. INTRODUCTION Brand is a magic word which fascinates many consumers to buy a product or service as soon as they come to know that certain offering is from a particular brand. Aware of the significance of brand management, now most of the organizations take brands seriously, engage themselves and spend a lot for brand building activities. Nowadays, whichever event we attend or a program we watch or a sport we play, it will be in one or the other way related to a brand. Previous times of a brand being used for the recall purposes only have changed and now brand is being considered as an integral asset. With the advent of significance of brand, at the same time, the number of options available has increased. Imagine if you want to buy a pair of shoes, search online or offline, and look at the varieties of brands there are. Every brand claims to be the best in its class. This creates a clutter in the mind of the buyer and thence the fate of every brand starts to rest upon pure chance that the buyer picks one of the many. The same is happening in different categories of products. However hard the companies are trying to distinguish their products, they are not able to reap the benefits. That’s because, today they make something new in the product, tomorrow someone will copy and perhaps improvise over the product, and take away all its customers. The same thing happens with the second player also. So finally, what is it that keeps the customers retained? What is it that makes marketers motivated to serve their customers better? Is it just improving over the product and driving somehow repeat purchases and then landing up in a situation where one fine day, some other player comes into the picture and takes away everything? The answer to these tricky questions which are there in the minds of all the marketers is building brand loyalty. Once the brand is made emotional and attached with the customers, so much so that customers cannot tolerate anything else other than the brand they are loyal to, marketers are successful and they only have to invest in retaining those loyal customers. Loyal customers are not that demanding and the cost of retaining them is much lesser than the cost of acquiring new customers from other players. . In today’s arena of competition amongst brands to gallop each one’s share of customers, defining 2


business only on the basis of convenience or price may not give sustainable leadership. Brand loyalty can lead to sustainable competitive advantage. Brand loyalty leads to a consumer preferring a brand over another under different combinations of circumstances of price, convenience, etc. Loyal consumers will consistently purchase products from their preferred brands. Thus we decided to take our topic as brand loyalty. There are many benefits of brand loyalty. Building brand loyal customers can benefit economically at a larger scale to the organization. The costs of creating awareness about the brand and acquiring a new customer can be higher than the costs needed for converting an existing customer into a loyal customer. And also the revenues generated by the loyal customer will be comparatively much higher than those generated by a normal customer. Over the lifetime of the loyal customer, he sticks with your brand only under all circumstances and provides delightful benefits. So, a comprehension of the factors attributing to brand loyalty is needed for effective spending on the process of brand management A very clear understanding about the various stages of a customer in attaining the brand loyalty is required. Starting from the stage of becoming aware of a brand, the customer undergoes so many stages before finally becoming loyal to the brand. Once, these steps are framed the organization can pertain the brand to the customers according to their stages and build on their value. But again, this is a challenging process because not all the customers follow through the same cycle of stages for becoming brand loyal. Before getting deep into brand loyalty, it is desirable to explore the stages preceding brand loyalty. a. First is Brand awareness. Brand awareness, as the term suggests it is about how one comes to know about the existence of a brand for first time. There are many numbers of ways, by which a person gets introduced about a brand. The person may encounter a brand in advertisements or hear it from a friend or come across it from a program. Many brands are keen on spreading their awareness and existence among the potential customers. The brand ‘DFL’ created awareness and stabilized itself in the memory of people after hosting the Indian Premier League. Even before that though it was a big player in its industry, after sponsoring the series it spread the knowledge about its existence to almost every household. This is first and foremost step of the evolution of any brand. b. Second is Brand interest. Brand interest is the feeling of some attention in a positive way arising towards the brand. This happens as an effect of being repeatedly voiced about a particular brand from your friends or someone you trust and consider as an opinion leader. Again the arousal of brand interest may depend on the individual customer and the credibility of the person who speaks 3


about the brand. Suppose, if a person hears about the good value of a brand from a person who is being closely related to the product and who is trustworthy, the person may be immediately interested to the brand. So only some of the health drinks and energy drinks endorse sports people as their ambassadors as they are closely related to the product. c. Third is Brand usage. If the interest increases within the customer, he tries to use the brand. This again depends on what type of product the customer is intending to buy. If the product involves a complex buying decision like a laptop, then the customer will not act based only on the interest. But contradicting to a complex product, if the purchase is about impulse buying or less complex product like a jean, then the customer will be going for the brand which he/she is interested in. The brand usage will be the first step, in which a direct relationship develops between the customer and the brand. But the intensity of the relationship and degree of the relationship will be determined by several factors such as the customer’s views about the product and the post-purchase evaluation of the brand. d. Fourth is Brand experience. Brand experience relates to the overall feeling that gathers in the minds of the customers after using the product for a certain period of time. Again this term is very subjective in nature. Because, a customer may evaluate the experience based on usage after many number of times or may be even after a single time. Everything depends on the customer’s mindset. The surrounding factors happening to the customer may also influence the perception about the brand experience on the consumer. For example, when a person tries “Park Avenue” shirt and wears it for the first time and coincidentally, he gets a promotion or incentive on that day, he will consider that shirt as lucky and perceive that the brand has given him a good experience. That’s why this term is explained to be very subjective. e. Fifth is Brand attachment. Brand attachment develops when the brand positively connects to the customer. The attachment develops by various reasons. It depends on how the person in being influenced by the brand. For example, if the person has been introduced to a brand for a long time by a family member who used it for a long time, this person may also have a kind of attachment to the brand. The brand attachment is always positive in sense and provides advantageous effects on the brand. The brand attachment can be so strong that it can strengthen one’s brand loyalty and substantiate their feelings toward the brand. This may even cause anxiety for the customers if their favorite brand is replaced by some other alternatives. On the whole, brand attachment involves both cognitive and emotional connect to a brand. f. Sixth is Brand attitude. Brand attitude is somewhat related to the brand attachment, but not completely. It determines the view and perception of a 4


customer towards a brand. It differs from brand attachment by many ways. First, it lacks the emotional connect with the brand that the brand attachment possesses. Since the emotional connect is missing, the brand attitude has less motivational power than that of attachment. Attitude about the brand is more about the quality of the brand the consumer’s judgment about the brand’s performance. And usually the brand attachment takes a longer time to develop when compared to the brand attitude. Brand attitude can be negative, whereas attachment is always positive and advantageous. Attitude is built by the perception alone; it is also supported by the conviction that the perception is correct g. Seventh is Brand trust. Brand trust, as the name indicates is the affirmative belief about a brand. A positive attitude towards a brand strengthens to form a brand trust. This creates an effect such that, the person buys a product even without viewing it or exploring its features but just by learning the brand’s name. It can develop under conditions of good experience only. For example, when a person buys ‘Philips’ iron box and finds it very reliable to use, he gains the same experience with another appliance like speakers form ‘Philips’, he tends to believe that their products are much reliable in use and next time he needs to buy a shaver, he will definitely prefer ‘Philips’ as he trusts this brand. This is a very significant process of a customer to become a brand loyalist. h. Eight is Brand affect. Brand affect can be defined as the capabilities of a brand to evoke a positive emotional connect in a customer to the brand after using that brand. For example, a customer visiting a particular showroom repeatedly may be due to the reason that the customer has developed personal ties with the staff in that showroom and feels like the mall to be designed according to his own preferences. He may possess such a strong feeling of affect that he can suggest the showroom personnel to procure clothes according to his taste for robes. The brand affect is another strong component which attributes to the brand loyalty of the consumer. i.

Finally comes the brand loyalty. This framework we have proposed is like a ladder where one leads to other. Brand loyalty comes at the top of this ladder. Brand loyalty, as conceptually defined by Jacoby and Chestnut (1978) is: (i) biased (i.e. non-random), (ii) behavioral response (i.e. purchase), (iii) expressed over time, (iv) by some decision-making unit, (v) with respect to one or more brands out of a set of such brands, and is a function of psychological(decisionmaking evaluate) processes. Brand loyalty can be operationalized either based on behavioral, attitudinal or composite approach (Jacoby & Chestnut, 1978). Behavioral loyalty has been considered as repeat purchases frequency (e.g. Brown, 1952) or proportion of purchase (e.g. Cunningham, 1956), while attitudinal brand loyalty referred to “stated preferences, commitment or

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purchase intentions of the customers”. We will look into the basics of brand loyalty in more detail in the next section under literature review. j.

Another very conceptual part of brand loyalty is brand repertoire.Brand repertoire is the phenomena in which a customer is committed towards a set of brands. He spends across several brands at different times. This mainly can originate when a customer finds that a set of brands are satisfying his needs. Probably, if the consumer has lower expectations from a brand, he might find that more than one brand satisfying his expectation. So such type of customer will not be able to differentiate between the different brands. He will go for any one of the brand in his preference set. The basic difference between disloyal customers and repertoire customers is that, these customers purchase from a selected set of brands only, whereas the disloyal customer spends across any brand. The brand repertoire contributes to a little share from the customer, when compared to subscription loyalty. Subscription loyalty is the condition under which the customer buys from a single brand only.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY The main motive of this study is to understand and obtain a general picture about the various attributes that contribute towards an individual’s brand loyalty. And also it focuses on how the person undergoes the stages. Advantage of building brand loyalty towards a brand is the marketing of products or services through word of mouth. Consumers who are loyal to a brand become brand ambassadors of the same and market it. This type of marketing through word of mouth is much more efficient and effective than the traditional marketing programs. Moreover, it comes for free of cost for the company. So the drivers of brand loyalty can be tried to be understood. There will be a time taken for the customer to start using a brand till he attains brand loyalty. This transition time is also an important aspect while considering the brand loyalty, because it also determines the profitability contributed to the brand as customers at different stages tend to behave differently. This transition time is also influenced by the drivers of the brand loyalty, as they affect the magnitude of the strength of the bond with the brand. When the drivers of brand loyalty are being identified, it can be used to influence the customers and used to decrease the transition time for the customer

LITERATURE REVIEW Now, we will look into the literature which already exists in the area of brand loyalty. This will help us in gaining an in depth understanding of brand loyalty.

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Basics of brand loyalty Starting from the definition of Brand loyalty, Jacob and Chestnut[1]have defined have defined it as " the biased behavioural response expressed over time by some decision making unit with respect to one or more alternative brands out of a set of such brands and is a function of psychological decision making evaluative processes.” This definition requires 6 requirements for brand loyalty namely (a). Biased (b).Behavioural response, (c).Expressed over time, (d).Some decision making unit involved in the process (can be an individual or a household), (e).one or more alternatives out of a set of brands, and is a (f). Psychological commitment towards a certain brand (M. Mellens, M. G. Dekimpe, JB. E.m.Steeniump)[1].[2] It is posited that brand commitment is not same to brand loyalty. Brand commitment is defined by economic or psychological attachment towards a certain brand. Economic commitment means high switching cost or lack of substitute (forced) whereas affective component relates to psychology and hence to brand loyalty (Fullerton, 2003, 2005, Thomson et al, 2005) [2]. [2][1] According to Chestnut, psychological commitment, may arise due to advertising and influence prior to using the brand so that customers get committed to try the brand and then through subsequent use of the brand, a positive affect gets associated with it that comes gradually through brand experience. So brand loyalty is an explanation of the behaviour but some researchers argue that brand loyalty is a consequence of the behaviour. These researchers argue that there is always a reward or a punishment associated with some purchase. If the former is assured, then researchers say that there will be brand repurchase but if the latter occurs, then brand switching occurs [2][1]. Measurement of Brand loyalty Brand loyalty can be measured by the level of recommendation given by users to others. [3] There are other measures of brand loyalty as well. Philip Stern and Kathy Hammond describe three measures of brand loyalty. (a) SCR: share of category requirement measure. It measures the relative share of category purchases that households give to each brand they buy. (b). SCR Pref: SCR adjusted for most preferred brand. (c). Polarization index: varying from 0 to 1 [3].[1] Jacoby also developed a measure for measuring the product category level of brand loyalty. According to this, there is a scale of brand acceptance and rejection. It has been shown that the more number of brands in the acceptance region, the less likely it is to see brand loyalty. It also depends on the distance between acceptance and rejection regions. The greater the distance, the higher are the chances of brand loyalty. But it should be noted that different measures are to be used for different purposes in marketing. For segmentation purposes, we use behavioural models of brand loyalty, for determining the repeat purchase, the commitment measure of brand loyalty is to be used, for determining the performance of marketing mix elements, look at the behavioural measures of brand loyalty [1].

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There is an empirical model for measuring brand loyalty on the basis of repeat purchases and frequency of the purchases proposed by JagadishSeth[23]. This model differs from the other models for measurement of brand loyalty in the fact that this focuses on the measure of an individual’s brand loyalty whereas the other models were the measure of aggregate brand loyalty. The number of repeat purchases of the desired brand, out of the number of total purchases made by a customer is taken into account and a matrix is obtained with the data. This matrix can be standardized and modeled into reference curves. Then the brand loyalty of customer can be related to the reference curve appropriate for him, providing the customer’s average brand loyalty score.

Anthropomorphization of Brand This is the most recent paper ( August 2012, Journal of Consumer Research) we took to show the extent of humanization of brand that comes under brand loyalty. [4a] Anthropomorphization is the attribution of uniquely human characteristics and features to non human creatures and beings, natural and supernatural phenomena, material states and objects, and even abstract concepts (Epley, Waytz, and Cacioppo 2007). PankajAggarwal and Ann L. Mc Gill have tried to examine automatic behavioural effects of priming brands that are anthropomorphized. The anthropomorphized brands trigger people’s behaviour in such a way that they acquire either assimilative or contrastive behaviour in accordance with the brand’s image. The authors have suggested a concept of partner and servant brands. Partner brands are the brands that are seen as coproducer of benefits by the consumer. Servant brands are seen as the outsourced provider of benefits. Aggarwal (2004) suggests that consumers use norms interpersonal relationships to guide their behaviour when interacting with brands, that they have an exchange relationship with, muck like a business partner, or a communal relationship with, much like a friend. The type of role assigned by the individual to a particular brand will influence the motivated preparation to interact with an anthropomorphized version of that brand and the consequent behaviour in response to that brand prime. The automatic behaviour in response to a brand prime depends on whether it is anthropomorphized or not. For brands that are anthropomorphized, the priming effects follow a pattern suggested by Cesario et al (2006). There is an assimilative behaviour to the image of a partner brand that is liked post priming and a contrastive behaviour to the partner brand that is disliked. The contrastive behaviour indicates that the respondent wanted that brand to go away. Assimilative and contrastive behaviour are determined by which route best achieves the desired social goal. People, who dislike a social group, can show behavioural assimilation if doing so facilitates the social goal of pushing this group away. Example: Cesario et al showed that if people disliked the African American, they can act as hostile, or aggressive, which is part of stereotype of this group, because acting in this manner best achieves the goal of keeping members of this group disliked group at a distance. For brands that were anthropomorphized as 8


servants, a contrastive behaviour was shown post priming when they were disliked but an assimilative behaviour was shown when they were liked. The interaction need not be consumption or purchase but the social interaction of brands in the life of the customers [4a]. [4b] Another most recent paper by Susan Fournier et al was explored to discover brands as relationship partners. The paper proposes thatbrands act as relationship agents. The consumer brand relationships have been widened beyond warmth and competence and also include excitement and power. This paper talks about the development of Brands as Intentional Agents Framework ( BIAF). The BIAF framework suggests several measures in which the strength between humans and brands can be more and more humanized and thus brand loyalty can be seeded in the customers. Kervyn at al. support that high levels of warmth and high levels of competence drive purchase intent and loyalty [4b]. Categories of Brand loyalty Different categories of brand loyalty have been defined by researchers. [1] According to Brown, there are three types of brand loyalty-(a). Consistent loyalty AAAAAAAAA (b). Divided loyalty ABABABAB and (c) Unstable loyalty AAABBB. A distinction has also been made between multi brand loyalty and brand switching behaviour. If the consumer purchase pattern is ABBAABBBAAABABA, and there are two brands available, then its called brand switching otherwise if there are more than 2 brands, then it is called multi brand loyalty [1].These types of brand loyalty focussed on the actual purchase of the customer. But brand loyalty is not only about repeat purchases. Dick and Basu defined further two types of loyalty. One is true loyalty which is not only guided by repeated repurchases but attitudinal components as well and the other spurious loyalty which is due to price or convenience alone. There is no psychological affective commitment in spurious loyalty as against true brand loyalty. True brand loyalty can come only through affective commitment. [2] According to Oriol Iglesias, Jatinder J. Singh, Joan M. Batista-Foguet, brand’s affective component plays a very important role in determining brand loyalty through brand experience. The authors argue that the more the brand experience with any user, the more likely it is to develop brand loyalty for that person but only through brand’s emotional/affective and psychological commitment [2]. Here comes the term Brand Experience. Brakus defines Brand experience as a set of feelings, cognitions, sensations, and behavioural responses that are evoked by many different stimuli which occur when customers interact directly or indirectly with a certain brand. Stages of development of Brand loyalty Before we delve deep into factors affecting brand loyalty, we look into the various stages of development of brand loyalty as suggested by the literature.[5] According to

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Richard L. Oliver, there has been a mention of 4 stages for development of true brand loyalty as mentioned above. 

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First is cognitive loyalty. The identifying marker is Loyalty to information such as price, features and so forth. the customer is attracted to the brand attributes. It is a very shallow level of commitment and brand loyalty. Any other perceived superior brand can take away the customer. The second stage is Affective Loyalty i.e. loyalty to a liking: "I buy it because I like it." comes through multiple satisfied usages of the brand over time which results in kind of development of emotions and affective components for the brand. it is at a deeper level of commitment but can be susceptible to dissatisfaction at the cognitive level, mainly through attractions of the alternative brand. The third stage is Conative i.e. Loyalty to an intention: "I'm committed to buying it.”. It is developed by a deep consumer motivation to buy and repurchase the brand. It can also be susceptible to dissatisfaction if the product is not able to perform well for multiple instances and has dissatisfied the customer. It has a deeper level of commitment and customer can weather or overcome few instances but if there are many, then he is likely to become disloyal The fourth is Action i.e. Loyalty to action inertia, coupled with the overcoming of obstacles. It refers to the process where intentions or motivations to repurchase are converted to actions of repeat purchasing the brand. The only factor that can divulge away these types of customers is the non availability of the brand at repeated occasions. The deepest level of brand loyalty is action loyalty [4].

Brand equity and Brand loyalty Brand equity plays a major role in development of brand loyalty. [6] TülinErdem, et al suggest how brand equity that in turn determines brand loyalty depends on consumer learning, choice of brands, and decision making processes. The attributes of a brand are realized over time. With addition of unique benefits to the brand, the consumers can perceive an incremental value that is called brand equity. Such equity endowments are learned over time and retrieved in the decision making process that helps in building loyalty towards the brand over time [6].

Role of Brand Affect and Brand Trust in building Brand Loyalty [7] Chaudhari and Holbrook have described the role of brand affect and trust in the development of brand loyalty. They establish the relationship between brand performance and brand loyalty. They have included two more attributes in the concept of brand valuations which currently includes brand equity and brand loyalty. Brand trust and brand affect are the new aspects of brand loyalty. According to the author, brand affect, which relates to the emotional component behind a brand purchase, leads to a greater market share. This is because over time, the consumer learns that the brand 10


resonates with his image of self and hence sales increases thus increasing market share. This is one of the metrics of brand performance. Other new concept namely, brand trust, which is a belief that only this brand can deliver the unique value than any other brand, leads to the ability of the consumer to pay a premium price for the brand. Paying a premium for a brand is another brand performance metric. In turn, brand affect and brand trust also lead to two types of brand loyalty namely, purchase loyalty which increases market share, and attitudinal loyalty, which increases the willingness of the consumer to pay. The study was done limiting the variables of the brand i.e. differentiation or share of voice and product related variables including utilitarian or hedonic purchases [7].

Brand attachment and Brand loyalty [8] Brand attachment also plays a role in defining the customer attitude towards a brand and thus shapes his loyalty behaviour. C.Whan Park, Deborah J. MacInnis, Joseph Priester, Andreas B. Eisingerich, & Dawn Iacobucci propose the development of a scale for measuring level of brand attachment. It suggests that the more customers are attached to the brand, the more they are willing to forsake their resources to maintain aongoing relationship with the brand. They can also be ready to invest time, money, reputation to maintain a brand attachment. Brand attachment comes from brand self connection and prominence. Brand self connection means personal connection with the brand and self image congruence, prominence means the natural or automatic thoughts/feelings of brand attributes or image or name. along with Brand attachment, even brand experience plays a role in the shaping of brand loyalty. J. Jo ˘skoBrakus, Bernd H. Schmitt, &Lia Zarantonello talk about brand experience scale, how brand experience can lead to brand satisfaction and loyalty to measure brand loyalty. A brand experience scale of 4 has been developed. There are 4 measures-sensory( sense organs appeal), affective(feeling, emotion, sentiment), behavioural( action oriented, engaging in physical behaviour with the brand), intellectual(curiosity, problem solving, thinking stimulation on encountering with the brand). The authors propose that brand experience-->brand personality and satisfaction and that further-->brand loyalty [8]. Motivational factors inside customers to get on to Brand loyalty After covering the various stages of brand loyalty, we now see the motivational factors inside customers to get loyal to the brand. [9] Loyalty can be due to motivational break away feeling or loyalty due to conformity. The latter comes from self imagecongruence. There are two further attributes studied - product knowledge and self image congruence. They are found to have asymmetric influence in the relation between these motivation levels and brand loyalty. Product knowledge increases the strength of link between escapism motivation and brand loyalty whereas excess product knowledge is found to reduce the linkage between brand loyalty and conformity motivation [9].

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Another motivation level comes from the study of consumer psychology. [10] Susan Fournier in carried out a study of 3 respondents to study the brand loyalty behaviours in them at an intense deep level. She has develops a brand relationship framework. According to goal based framework, there are three points in for development of brand relationships in a Psychological context. Those are (i) brands helping to resolve life themes. (ii) they being related to life projects/tasks. (iii) or being related to current concern with the strongest bonding. A study of three women in different life contexts and demographics was done to understand their brand relationships. The first woman of study was highly ambitious and performance driven. Hence she made her brand purchases on a set of critical evaluation criteria on functional attributes. She became a brand loyal to a particular brand over time with usage. A sort of brand myth also got incorporated in the making of that particular product over time. There was a trial done by her on other’s influences. But if the regular brand stood on all competing brands, then she remained loyal to her initial brand post trial. Thus here the brand helped in resolving life themes related to daily life and she became thus brand loyal. The second specimen for study was a woman aged near 40. She was in confused state of mind as to whether she should live for the self or for the others. She did not have time with her tight schedules. Thus any brand that helps to resolve this conflict is perceived to be significant. She was brand loyal to a particular brand of perfumes (self grooming), shoes, and makeup. She was an independent lady and wanted to spare time for herself, so she emphasized Reebok that resonated with her life. The third woman of study was in of age 23 years looking for self definition. So her current concern was that she should find a suitable lifestyle for her, while rooted in her values. So, she preferred brands she identified with her mother and kept on trying a variety of brands to identify the one which resonates with her self image. When brands represent self, then brand loyalty changes to self loyalty. She wants variety with consistency or stability hence she tries a variety of products with a certain pattern or behaviour. Thus a relationship dyad is formed between the customer and the brand whereby brands are thought as relationship partners. The brand personality is determined by the actions taken brand managers. Depending on the perception, a certain action can be translated to a specific personality trait and that gets reinforced on repeated observations of behaviours [10]. A lot of attention has been given to brand loyalty amongst young customers. [11] RK Srivastava studied brand loyalty in young customers. This paper attempts to make a measure of the degree of difference in brand loyalty in the said age group across various product categories and also tries to explain the drives for selection of a brand in each of the categories. Brand loyalty is measured using proportion of last 5 purchases of a particular brand. If 3 out last 5 purchases were of a single brand then the brand becomes “the first preferred brand”. The findings suggest that there is a considerable difference in observed brand loyalty in the different categories of products. Brand loyalty in case of coffee and toothpaste was due to quality, novelty and reputation influence, whereas for mobile it was found to be reflection of self as image. Brand loyalty can be exhibited using a number of ways including advocacy, willing to 12


recommend or purchase repeatedly with regularity. Within all categories, quality was found to be one of the most important factors of the purchase. This alone cannot justify brand loyalty but one of the necessities for the loyalty to come up. Finally it suggests that product performance is not something to be highlighted in the promotion of mobile handsets but quality and reflection of self image are more important to be highlighted. Value and variety are important so sales promotion might be working for driving up the sales of coffee brands. Thus different categories have different set of preference for consumers to become loyal and hence different marketing mixes are needed for them [11]. Talking about young consumers, which are the target segment of most of the companies today due to their high potential, a very interesting phenomenon has been observed, whereby it has been found against the common misbelieve that young consumers cannot be brand loyal.[12] After a conducting a research, it has been concluded by the authors Katherine Anderson and Byron Sharp that the younger customers are being targeted more and more by the growing brands. The possible explanations for this type of targeting are given as – the young customers being new to the product category can be easily attracted by a brand and also there is a notion that they do not hesitate to try new products, as they look for new experiences. The brands which are in their growth stage gain an advantage by easily targeting the young customers, in which ‘young’ denotes that they are younger than the average aged customer of a particular product segment. Though young customers can be targeted, the authors suggest that a brand can sustain its growth and become a bigger brand only if it sells across different age groups. Thus it is not guaranteed that if a brand is able to attract younger customers to buy its products, it will definitely grow. However, if the brand sells across large number of age groups, then it is likely to attract a number of younger customers. Hence, for the established brands, the paper suggests that they should make every effort to educate the young customers about their brands. This will increase their sales and customer base also. However, targeting younger customers is easy for start ups so they should do the same without much o investment. But again, in the long run, to grow, they should keep their customer base across different age groups[12]. Oliver's conceptualization of brand loyalty is defined as loyalty to be exhibited in the following forms:   

loyalty belief(I like the brand), loyalty behaviour (I use the brand), loyalty action( I can go to any extent for brand).

Factors affecting Brand Loyalty The brand loyalty is not the same every time and is affected by a number of factors. [3] According to Philip Stern and Kathy Hammond, there is always heterogeneity in purchase incidences. This paper proposes that brand loyalty declines with increase in purchase incidence. From 5 to 15 purchases: there is a sharp decrease in brand loyalty; 13


from 16 to 60 purchases, there is a decrease in brand loyalty further but this time more slowly; and in 60+ purchases, there is no change in observed brand loyalty. According to these authors, brand loyalty also varies with heavy or light users. If brand loyalty is compared for light and heavy users across an equal number of purchases, (in order to control for small number effect), heavy buyers are more loyal. That is the reason CRM programs aim at segmenting the customers by weight of purchases. We will talk about segmentation more in the subsequent part of this section. The reason coined for the same is that there is a learning effect in case of heavy buyers. Light users tend to forget the benefits more easily. Of course, this theory holds good where the repurchase cycle is small so that significant learning can take place in the small interval of time for heavy buyers [3].[13] According to John U. Farley, there are various possible reasons for variation in brand loyalty at a household level . a. The first reason is price. It is not the price level but price activity- relative prices of different products at a certain time. b. The other reason is relative importance in terms of the time and money spent. c. The third factor is number of users/usages and variety seeking behaviour. They are related to brand switching. d. Another factor is distribution of brand. This is further reinforced by the factor of brand last purchased. If a particular brand is being considered for repeat purchased and is widely distributed, there are high chances of the brand being repurchased due to lesser risk taking and habitual behaviour. e. Last factor is the market share of the leading brand. It has been found that consumers are less brand loyal under these conditions. First, more is the number of alternatives available. Second, higher amount of price activity. Third, higher amount of relative importance for a particular category. Fourth, higher is the variety seeking behaviour of household in terms of use/usage of members. Similarly, the brand loyalty instances are higher when brands are widey distributed, and Market share of leading brand is high. Thus this explains us that brand loyalty can vary not only on the product specs alone but also market structure [13]. [14] Brand loyalty is also affected by perceived quality and time passed. Brand loyalty has been defined in terms of money or perceived quality and time over which the consumer had an opportunity to switch brands. Brand loyalty depends on perceived quality which is determined by price, and time over which the number of trials can be suggested. If the price of an unfavoured brand is further decreased, then the unavoidability is further reinforced. But over time, if the user realizes that there is no perceived difference in the brand of use and the competing brand though, least purchased, then an offer on the latter might induce him to go for the latter. So price reductions work well on brands that have perceived qualitysame as that of brand of use [14].

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[15] Brand loyalty is also affected by interpurchase times. Higher is the interpurchase time, lower is the repeat purchase probability. This means that RPP is a measure of brand loyalty. For heavy users, interpurchase time is very less, so brand loyalty is higher, than light users whose interpurchase time may be large. However, in the experiment conducted here, the interpurchase time and heavy buyer phenomenon were separated. And then it was found that time did not have much effect on brand loyalty [15]. According to [26] Peter J. Danaher, Isaac W. Wilson and Robert A. Davis, there is an observed variability in loyalty when the same product is being purchased over online and offline. A research was done on a sample of customers to recognize the purchasing behaviour both online and offline. It was found that a strong brand loyalty existed among the customers during online purchases. The brands with the higher market share were the brands with many loyal customers in the grocery products segment that was taken for research. It was also found that the customers purchasing online chose mostly these brands exhibiting a higher degree of loyalty. The same brand which had a stronger offline presence, did not exhibit the same kind of high loyalty from the same set of customers. And the brand loyalty was found to be highest for the niche category products. [16] Haiche and P.B. Seetharaman have tried to analyse how brand loyalty is affected with long interpurchase times. According to them, in case of durables where the replacement cycle is long, brand loyalty plays a major role. In order to ensure that customers purchase a particular brand repetitively after a considerable time has elapsed post purchase, it is important for marketers to know the degree of brand loyalty amongst the customers today for the existing competing brands. This paper helps to evaluate brand loyalty in case of automobiles among three alternatives where the repeat purchase cycle is longer than say, normal household durables. In order to determine brand loyalty, this paper emphasizes on the last move data. Last move data means time elapsed between last purchase brands and existing brand. It has been modelled with the help of three variables. i denotes the brand last purchased. j denotes the present brand in use. ij denotes the transition time between switching of brands. Then the author computes brand loyalty on the basis of two factors. First, the extent of repeat purchases and Second, the transition time between purchases. According to the author, even if number of buyers of a particular brand Y is large, a brand X can have more loyalty than Y if the repeat purchase transition time is longer for brand X. Specifically, late replacers are more brand loyal than early replacers [16]. [17] Jeffrey S. Podoshen and Susan A. Andrzejewski have tried to bring out the relationship that exists between materialism and the three concepts – conspicuous consumption, impulse buying and brand loyalty. Conspicuous consumption is a behaviour in which people buy things with a motive to show off those things to others. Conspicuous behaviour affects Materialism. Materialism is a kind of obsession towards buying products often for satisfying themselves. The people who exhibit materialism 15


tend to believe that the buying of products only brings them happiness. From the analysis of the samples, the authors have found out that materialism influences to a greater level in brand loyalty for stronger brands. On the other hand, in growing brands, materialism does not affect the brand loyalty[17]. A segmentation model for customers based on Brand Loyalty [18] On the same lines,looking at the importance of brand loyalty, a segmentation model has been developed for assisting marketers. A tri dimensional model has been developed for segmenting the loyal/disloyal customers. The paper proposes a three dimensional matrix for segmenting the loyal customers according to their levels of attitudinal and behavioural loyalty. Three types are considered: behavioural, cognitive and emotional loyalty. Two levels are considered. Then customers are classified as per their exhibited behaviour. Depending upon their location in the matrix, the company should make loyalty strategies. a. the first category are the stable loyal with high emotional, high cognitive, high behavioural loyalty. They feel positive about using the brand, believe it is a good choice and prefer to use it repeatedly. Referral programs can be offered to these, they must be thanked by the company for their loyalty behaviour and more directly contacted. b. Second ones are the passionate loyal who have high emotional loyalty, high behavioural loyalty but low cognitive loyalty. Such Consumers gain emotional benefits from using the brand; however, they may not be aware of the functional benefits of the brand. They prefer to use the same brand. Minimum effort and emotional appeals should be offered. like instant win competitions. c. Third category is the functional loyal who is low on emotional loyalty and high on cognitive and behavioural loyalty. Consumers gain functional benefits from the brand and do not seek emotional value from use. They prefer to use this still. Strategies for retaining these consumers involve offering value-added promotions that have rational appeal, such as executive tools / toys or information-laden items such as newsletters, open-days, advice sessions and tailored technical tools (possibly delivered online). D. the fourth category is the vulnerable also called spurious loyalty buyers who are low on cognitive and emotional loyalty but have high level of behavioural loyalty. They use the brand habitually. To increase cognitive loyalty the organisation needs to first identify the reasons for the low cognitive loyalty and increase the perceived differentiation of the brand via new information. Increasing emotional loyalty can be done by adding excitement to the brand or product category. e. Fifth category are the hot potentials who have low behavioural loyalty but high emotional and cognitive loyalty. Such Consumers feel positive about using the brand, believe it is a good choice but use other brands when purchasing. Strategies for attracting hot potentials include reducing perceived switching costs through free / low16


cost trials of the product and stimulating an experience of excitement or fear of missing out. f. Sixth category is the hopefuls low on behavioural and cognitive loyalty but high on emotional loyalty. Consumers feel positive about using the brand but are not aware of the functional benefits, and use other brands when purchasing. g. Seventh category is cold potentials. They are high only in cognitive loyalty. Consumers understand the benefits of using the brand but do not gain any emotional value from loyalty, and use other brands. h. the last category are the disloyal. They are low on all types of loyalty. They are likely to require substantial effort from the organisation to be convinced and unless their net worth justifies this effort and expense, they are best left as a low priority. Therefore, after segmenting customers on the loyalty scale, it is important for companies to focus on the loyal customers[18]. [19] Son K. Lam, Michael Ahearne, Ye Hu, &NielsSchillewaert suggests that if customers switch to other competitive brands due to identity mechanisms then creating attractive functionalities for the product may not work. Sampling, and other sales promotions may attract customers only in the short run. Therefore in order to guarantee the coming back of switchers a re-branding has to be done [19]. Similarly, the advertisements designed by the company have a huge effect on brand loyalty.[20]Authors AamnaShakeelAbbasi, et al suggest for advertisers the kinds of ads that can lead to strong brand associations and brand loyalty. The more an ad is perceived to be likeable, delivers what it promises, uses celebrities to build around a unique personality around the brand, persuasive- the more consumers are likable to try the brand, like it and repeat purchase with the eventual development of strong brand attachments with the brand [20]. Effective Company Strategies to cultivate Brand Loyalty Companies are also employing effective strategies to cultivate brand loyalty like the underdog effect.[21]NeeruPaharia,AnatKeinan, Jill Avery, Juliet B. Schor describe the concept of underdog where the firm is facing an external disadvantage but at the same time is passionate and determined. Many companies including Google and Apple try to make an image of Underdog in the eyes of the consumer. This helps in actually seeding brand loyalty. Underdog narratives are often delivered to consumers through the rhetorical device of a brand biography, an unfolding story that chronicles the brand's origins, life experiences, and evolution over time in a selectively constructed story. The authors argue that these brand biographies are effective because consumers react positively when they see the underdog aspects of their own lives being reflected in branded products. Underdog brand biography effect is driven by identity mechanisms in 4 ways (a) mediated by consumers' identification with the brand, (b) greater for consumers who strongly self-identify as underdogs, (c) stronger when consumers are

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purchasing for themselves versus for others, and (d) stronger in cultures in which underdog narratives are part of the national identity[21]. A counteractive strategy is also needed in times to be implemented. Brand switching is an important factor leading to the decrease in the proportion of the customers for a brand. The measures to be adopted by a brand in such conditions to restrict switching are given by [25]Son K. Lam, Michael Ahearne, Ye Hu, &NielsSchillewaert. When a customer tries to switch over from a brand with a motive of changing his identity, it is moreover a psychological transition rather than a behavioural change. When this kind of switching happens, the brand should analyse what percentage of people are switching over. If there is a large proportion of the customer base moving to other brand, then rebranding can be done to sustain the customers. But rebranding may incur a lot of expenses as it requires change of processes and lot of information travelling from the top to bottom of the organization. Another reason for switching may be the occurrence of a market disruption by the introduction of a radically new brand. When a new brand is being introduced, a proportion of the current customers may tend to switch. But it is necessary for the older brand to stress on the functional advantages of the brand and persuade its customers to hold on to the brand. In order to prevent brand switching, creation of a strong brand identity is necessary. Creation of a strong brand identity will happen only by building relationship with the customers. Companies should also be careful in extending the brand to other lines/categories. This is because of reciprocal effect of the performance of extended product on the original brand. [22] There is a reciprocal effect on the brand when it is extended. The companies must make a balance between the leveraging the brand asset to other extensions but at the same time also ensures that reciprocal effect does not harm the brand. The reciprocal effect is seen to be higher for high Need for Cognition individuals. This is due to their nature of carefully evaluating brand through its extensions. At the same time it is seen that the reciprocal effect is also dependent on product attribute cues. The reciprocal phenomenon occurs in the presence of differing attribute cues about the extension (i.e. descriptions of brand related or distinctive product attributes) [22]. It is very important to implement the appropriate strategy for a specific type of customer depending on the profitability obtained through him. The balanced strategy between loyalty and probability only can give us a profitable relationship with the loyal customers. Based on the loyalty and profitability, the customers are divided into four categories by Werner Reinartz and V.Kumar[26]and an appropriate strategy is proposed for each segment – strangers, butterflies, barnacles and true friends. Strangers are the type of customers who have a short term relation with the organization and also providing low profitability. Such type of customers is not needed and the focus should be only on obtaining profits from each transaction with them. Butterflies are the customers who stay for a short time but provide a good profitability. The focus should be mainly on these type of customers to convert them into loyal customers. It can be done by creating a strong attachment of the brand with them. Barnacles are long term 18


customers but who does not provide high profits to the organization. This type of customers is a kind of burden to the organization. So strict cost control measures should be followed in their case. True friends are the loyal customers who also provide high profitability. These customers are already satisfied with the brand, because of why they maintain a long-term relation with the organization. So these customers’ loyalty should be strengthened by delighting them and both their attitudinal and behavioural loyalty should be strengthened. These strategies can effectively provide good profits to the brand.

METHODOLOGY OF PRIMARY RESEARCH We conducted primary research through in depth interview to find out the if there was brand loyalty across different product categories, explore relationships of customer with the brand over time. The in depth interviews were qualitative in nature. The respondents were allowed free to talk about their lives, their preferences, their bad and good experiences with the brands, their values behind purchasing the product. The purpose of designing this type of research was to find the fit of brands with the lives of consumers. There were some deep and involuntary responses which could not have been covered through structured interview. Therefore we chose the method of qualitative methods. The respondents were from different background and demographics. The purpose of this was to get a broad view of the consumer behaviour related to their brands with the audience with as much different nature as possible. We have tried to capture the entire spectrum of brand loyalty across the segments. There were a total of 10 respondents. The min age was 18 years and the max age was 54 years. They were all interviewed in Trichy itself. In line with the methodology of Susan Fournier in “Consumers and their Brands”, we tried to find out the relationship status of brands being used by respondents. For this, we probed deeper into the lifestyle of the respondent and try to guess the problems they were facing in their lives. Finally, we tried to capture two facts,(1) was there any relationship existing between the brand and the consumer (2) If yes, what was the strength of this relationship and what was the association between the brand and the respondent. Post finding this, we propose the essential elements to exist that can determine the presence of brand loyalty. Though they are not exhaustive pertaining to the number of respondents studied, location constraints and time limits. Product category- we did not want to restrict ourselves to any particular product category. But at the same time we made sure that the categories are related across all individuals. The initial discussion with the respondent started without any particular product in mind. The respondent was himself asked about the product he/she liked to buy the most. From there on, we caught up and tried to probe further deep into the 19


mind of the respondent. The main motive of designing this type of research methodology was to choose categories in such a way that they are high involvement for the user. In order to maintain uniformity for comparison purposes, we also placed a boundary on the variants of product categories. The boundary was that the product category was such that it did not involve too much of rational thinking for purchase and respondents cannot clearly distinguish between two brands of the same product purely on the basis of functional benefits.

Data collection The in depth interviews were conducted with 7 cases as shown below over a period of 20 days. In each of the cases, we describe here the lifestyle, preferences in general, good or bad experiences of the respondents followed by our second part of interview, which focussed on the brand of a particular product in use by respondent. Then in the third part, we try to find out if there is a relationship between the respondent and the brand. In the fourth part, we try to find out the strength of such relationship, if it exists. Case1:26 years female, Research fellowship program student. The study on Arpita started through an in depth interview with her. She is a married person. She has a joint family at home with 14 members. She was born and brought up in Uttar Pradesh. Then she got married and her in-laws’ place is in Kolkata. She stays in Trichy currently doing her fellowship programme in NIT Trichy. We tried to find out her relationships with all members of her family. We attempted to do this so that we could try to humanize the brand for her and find out where and how any brand fits into her life. She says that she is very particular about the likes and preferences about each of the members. She cares for them all. When she goes home, she takes something or the other for every member in her family. Even small things have been giving a lot of happiness to her and her family members. She says that when she went home last time, she took idols of Lord Ganesha for her home. Everyone became very happy with the gift. We asked her about the expenses that she generally bears when she is living here alone. In her family, her husband and her two elder brothers in law are working and earning. There is a common source of income for the entire house. She is the youngest daughter in law of the house. She says that she always tries to save money for her family. She said that she can stay in Trichy with INR 12000 and manage her expenses for 7 months. She does spend on her likeable items but at the same time, she is wise enough to balance her expenses over the months. If she purchases more for one month, she tries to balance it by spending less on food and other necessary items. Then she was asked her about her hobbies. She said that she likes to watch serials and reality shows when at home. She was probed further to know 20


what she liked in those serials. She replied that she likes to watch the drama and during those shows, she likes to notice the apparel, merchandise of the celebrities. She yearns to own them but due to high prices, she cannot afford to do so. Then the interview went about her shopping behaviour. She said that every month she goes shopping even in Trichy. She likes to do shopping but at the same time, she does not like to spend lavishly on branded item. She has a perception that spending on branded clothes is not wise for her and her family. She does like to have variety of stuffs and she buys them very frequently. She gets bored with her clothes when she does not shop every month. Her dislike for brands was tried to be reasoned out. She said that she used to wear Killer jeans before her marriage. That was the first brand she had tried. She liked the brand of jeans and bought 2 or 3 sets of those. She said that she bought them over a period of 2years. But later after her marriage, she stopped buying them. The reason she mentioned was that at least for 1 to 1.5 years, she was not allowed to wear jeans in her house. After further probing, it was found that she did buy Lee brand of jeans recently. But that was due to her helplessness. She had to go somewhere. She had the clothes but she did not find them apt for the event. Then, she decided to buy a pair of branded jeans. She bought Lee. She wore the same and was very happy with her attire. She started to use that pair of jeans roughly and still uses them. But she does not change to buying branded clothes. Her choices remain the same for unbranded clothes. That buying of Lee became a onetime event for her. She still likes to purchase unbranded items every month. In her words “shopping for inexpensive and latest clothes is fun”. There was a major constraint of money in the above scenario. We tried the respondent to imagine a condition in which there was no financial constraint for her. Surprisingly, she said that if the financial constraints were not there she would try all the brands, wear the latest in fashion. Insights gained So we could say that clothes were the category she liked the most to shop. This was a very high involvement product for her. For her, variety and frequency both are important to drive purchase. From the above description, we can say at first, that the lady was not brand loyal because there was no repeat purchase and the willingness to pay a premium for the brand was not there. But when we go deeper into the analysis, we can find that at first, when she tried Killer, she liked it. She purchased the same after trying different brands. Thereafter, she bought 2 or 3 pair of jeans of the same brand. According to her, when she used to go to any shop, she did not look for any brand but Killer. She also mentioned that she used to go alone mostly to shop so this brand was her own choice and was not influenced by anyone. We can say that since the branded jeans category was new, she did not like to experiment and hence purchase any other brand and risk her little savings. So, she had developed a faith and a kind of trust for Killer brand. At the same time, very interesting phenomenon was seen that she did not do shopping every month when she got Killer brand as she does now. She used to buy occasionally and was contented with Killer. These findings point to the fact that there 21


was brand loyalty for Killer jeans. After the marriage, she stopped buying branded jeans. They became something she aspired for. So, actually she fell into a conflict between selffulfilment of desires and living for others. Thus, in this conflict, there were spikes observed in her self-fulfilment desire when she went for shopping every month. Going for buying clothes every month actually started from her variety seeking behaviour. This variety seeking behaviour stemmed from the fact that she was not contented and she felt something was lacking in her life. This was due to unaffordability of her previous brand of jeans which she had become loyal to. Here we can say that the Killer brand of jeans acted as her partner then (according to paper on anthropomorphization of brand by PankajAggarwal and Ann L. Mc Gill). Before marriage, she made Killer her partner and followed behaviour in such a way that she struck a balance between her financial conditions and her liking for the brand. But post marriage, since she was not satisfied, she became a shopaholic. She used to watch serials and reality shows, which made her desire more intense for something to buy for herself. When she had to buy a pair of jeans for the event, she did not buy Killer but Lee. This was not due to availability but the passage of time span between her last purchase of Killer and her purchase post marriage. She did try Killer but bought Lee. Thus a very important concept can be seen that actually brand loyalty does not last forever. When there is a large gap between the purchases of the category itself, the brand attachment declines and the person becomes variety seeking. At present, she is happy with her Lee brand. But she has not stopped purchasing every month. It simply states that though, she found the branded pair of jeans again, she is not delighted yet. This is because migration away from her preferred brand has led her to variety seeking behaviour, which makes her “cold” to any type of brand. She purely sees functional benefits in the brand and does not get attached to it anyway. The above situation points out that brand loyalty has to be sustained over time for the companies to ensure long term sustainability of its market share. As brand loyalty is something that does not last forever, if left, it dies out slowly in the beginning and then at the exponential rate at the end. In this case, it made the person, who was initially brand loyal, variety seeking. There is not even brand repertoire where she is loyal to a set of brands. But she has just come on a trial setup where she wants to try everything new and latest. Thus, the brand loyalty factor has been completely overshadowed by the variety seeking behaviour due to large time elapsed between purchases and that has made her to try and buy different brands even when the financial constraints are removed. Case #2: 48 years female, Government servant. Mrs. Sudha is a working woman of 48 years old. She was born and brought up in a rural part of Tamil Nadu, in India. Her childhood was such that she, amidst of poor economic conditions, managed to go to school and finish her secondary education. She has been a hard worker even in childhood. So she used to finish her academic works quickly and 22


then help her parents. She did not compromise her works related to studies for that. She balanced both the works well. That ability to manage between many works has been inherent from her childhood. Then later she went on to pursue a diploma course. The economic conditions were not so good even at that time, but still she managed to complete with good marks. She did not frequently purchase any apparels or similar goods even after coming to the graduation level. The only time when she does shopping is when necessity arises. After a satisfying performance in graduation, she got into a job offered by the government. The government jobs were of high standard at that time providing permanent employment and paying at a decent level at par compared with many other jobs. This has raised her family’s standard of living to a litter higher level than where they were. Her family comprised of her parents and two younger brothers. Once she got the job she became the highest earning person of the family. But even after starting earning, she spent at the same level at which she was spending before, because, she bear the responsibility of looking after the expenses of her younger brothers who were into the secondary education at that time. Then she got married to a person who was earning less than her. And they had most of their earnings together for themselves. She still continued financing her parents from a part of her salary. Over the time, her husband also got a government job and now there were two stable earning people in the family. They got two kids and their life went on with the expenses for bringing them up and educating them well. Now both she and her husband were keen on their children’s education so they sent their children to a high school. This made them limit their spending and she was still spending in a similar fashion as she was doing early. The only change was that now she bought dresses in regular intervals. Meanwhile, while probing about her purchase characteristics, she first said that she was not that brand conscious about the products. She did not spend much time on choosing dresses or sandals from any particular brand. Then when probed about for what purchases she spends time, her answer was about the groceries and the products purchased monthly for household purposes. Leading on this topic, when she was asked about one product which immediately comes to her mind when thinking about the purchase list she soon responded with the product ‘Vim bar’ in seconds. When asked about from when she has been using that product, she conceded that she has been using it for more than 15 years. She also added that she has never tried any dish wash. When asked about why she did not try any other brand, she replied that her mother used Vim and so she had known its efficiency in cleaning utensils since her childhood days. When asked about the other brands she was aware of in the dish washers category she listed “Exo and Pril’. But she had not tried any of those brands.

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Insights gained Being brought up in such conditions, she has understood the value of money very well. She is brand loyal. This is evident from various facts obtained in the interview. She has exhibited the affinity towards the brand over a long period of time. She has not switched to any other brand meanwhile, knowing that there are other alternatives that do exist. She believes that this brand will perform well and this is a sign of her brand trust. When probed over more about the ‘Vim’ by relating it to a person through personification technique, she described ‘Vim’ as a lady, who is very active, completes her work in time, efficient, fulfilling her duties, etc. This description denotes that she has close ties with brand ‘Vim’ which can be observed from her personal life. There is a personification of the brand and it acts as her helper and supporter to finish the work efficiently. She, as an active person right from her childhood, balances the household works and also her profession. She perceives ‘Vim’ also as same kind of product which completes work soon efficiently with a good performance. She indirectly views the brand as a reflection of herself. This has made her close to the brand and has developed a feeling of connect with itself. In this case, the personal factors of her have played a role in influencing her to continue the use of that brand. This is a kind of perception in which customers view brand as an extension of oneself. She had come to know about the brand of ‘Vim’ from television advertisements, which features Vim as a brand which performs quickly. So this has created an interest to buy that brand and over a period of time, with good experience of using it, that had developed to brand loyalty. And the main factor which is the reason for her loyalty is the resemblance of her characteristics by the brand personification phenomenon as described above. Since she also replicates the same, she likes the brand. Product attributes are another reason which has made her to buy “Vim”. [28] So this case leads to a conclusion that there are increasing chances for a person to become brand loyal when they experience the brand and get emotionally attached to it (in this case self image congruence was seen)[28]. Brand experience ( functional)

Brand attachment

Brand loyalty

Case #3: 26 years male, Government servant. The respondent works as a junior mechanical engineer. He completed his engineering 2 years ago. He got a job in a government organization and got posted in Hyderabad at first, where he worked for 1 year and then he was transferred to Trichy. The respondent is not married. He was born and brought up in Jharkhand. His father works in Coal mines and mother is a housewife. We tried to gather data about his lifestyle in Jharkhand and Trichy, and then tried to find if there was any strain of brand loyalty. The respondent is rich and according to him he had a very nice time in Jharkhand. He used to travel on weekends between Ranchi and Sindri. In Ranchi, he used to do a lot of 24


shopping and take rest at home. He is the only child of his parents. Due to this, as per him, he has always been pampered by his parents. He liked to wear fashionable watches when he was in college. He used to show it off to his class mates and friends and enjoyed. Every year, he used to buy new watch so that he was always in tune with fashion. Sindri is not a very developed place where anyone could have got attractive and fashionable items. But he used to buy them from Ranchi and got satisfaction in showing off his watches to his friends. He described an incident when one day his friend stole his watch which he had got new. When he came to know that his watch was missing, he became terribly disturbed. The watch was the latest fast track model then. So he felt very sad and he became so depressed that he missed his classes for one day and stayed in his hostel. Looking at his sadness, his friend who had flicked his watch returned it to him. When he came to know about it, he became very angry on his friends and decided never to wear that watch again. He kept the watch aside, went to college with some other ordinary watch (in his terms) and later when he went to Ranchi, he got another new watch. He said that he got the same fast track brand but different model. We asked about his shopping at Ranchi and he said that every time he used to go shopping, his mother or some friend used to accompany him. He used to buy watch on their and his own choice. He used to get inside the fast track show room only because that was the ‘only good show room’ in Ranchi then, in his words. After coming to Trichy, he stopped buying fast track. He said that he has undergone a change in his behavior.After joining his job; he has started saving money from his salary. He felt he had some responsibility towards his parents and thus kept a proportion of his salary in the account so that he can use them when need arises. He said that in Hyderabad, out of his first salary, he got an expensive shirt for his father and a sari for her mother. For himself, he got a pair of Woodland shoes. When we talked to him about his watch, he emphasized on the time. He said, he had to keep up with time always so that he is never late to office. If he is never late to office, then he can establish a good rapport with his boss and colleagues. He said he wanted a watch that looked classy and responsible. He had an impression that fast track is too college-ish types. So he got Pierre Cardin watch from Hyderabad which he has been using till now. He went alone to a mall and then tried different places to buy a watch. After a lot of considerations, he bought Pierre Cardin. We also asked if he was happy wearing the watch, his response was that he was extremely happy with the watch because it never got him late and he felt confident. When probed further, he said that he would like to recommend this watch to others also and would not like to buy Fast Track again. When he goes to parties organized by office people, he still wears the same watch. At home, he does not like to wear any watch now and rather ‘be free’ in his terms.

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Insights gained The user exhibited an extreme case of attachment to his Fast Track watch. He was a conspicuous buyer as mentioned in the literature. He wanted to be latest and updated always for showing off to his friends. The instance when his watch had got stolen and he did not wear the same watch again indicates that there is an element of brand personality coming up. The respondent associated himself with the watch and thus when it went in some others’ hands; he did not like the association to get interfered and then bought another one. There was personification of the category in the life of the customer. The respondent said that he did not have any other alternative than Fast Track in Ranchi. So he always used to go to the same retail store. This means he has all the features of spurious loyalty to fast Track due to factors of convenience and true loyalty to the category of branded watches as such because he could have got watches in Sindri also but he did not buy from there but from Ranchi always. He defined himself with the watch he wore. According to definition by Jacoby and Chestnut, he does not exhibit true brand loyalty to Fast Track because there were no alternatives in front of him. Now talking about the second part of his life where he starts working. We see that he does not want to wear any more Fast Track watches. This is because his concept about himself has changed. His personality has undergone a change. Apparently, because the brand of watch which he got during his college was only fast track, he is misinterpreting the watch brand as too kid-ish and not apt for going to office. He does not want to see any new variety also of fast track. This is the concept of breaking away motivation with fast track. The market structure of Fast Track actually made him form some different image of Fast Track. When he went to Hyderabad, he tried different brands, and finally chose Pierre Cardin. He said that the watch is so good that everyone should try once. We do not know if he is going to buy the same brand of watch next time because with increase in inter-purchase time, the repeat purchase probability decreases as mentioned in the literature section. We cannot say whether he has brand loyalty or not because there is no evidence of behavioral loyalty but we can say that with just one time purchase, he is able to associate himself with the brand. Two reasons are there for the prompt role of Pierre Cardin brand in his life which was not pronounced for Fast Track earlier. First, he went alone shopping to buy watch for himself. He has a liking for the brand due to its functional and hedonic benefits. Second, there were many alternatives present before him when he was making the purchase of Pierre Cardin. He has been wearing the same brand of watch since 2 years now because he has changed and does not like to purchase too often. So he can be said at the level of affective commitment. He is not committed to the level of conative loyalty because he has not formed any intention of purchasing the same brand of watch in his next purchase.

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One more thing to be noted is that when he could buy Woodland shoes for himself, which are expensive, then he could have bought another watch also but he did not because he has become a value buyer. He is missing his house and thus wants to be disciplined in office at all times, even in parties, so that they allow him to go home when he needs to go. Therefore, sometimes a brand’s image gets formed due to market structure. Loyalty alone being defined by repeat purchase is not enough. This person got emotional ties when he wore Fast Track (spurious loyalty) and Pierre Cardin (affective attachment due to self-image congruence). He is trying to change himself with the brand of his watch. His watch is assisting him in some way or the other to get changed and become mature. This is leading to the formation of a mature brand image in the eyes of the consumer. The user does not like to wear Pierre Cardin at his house signifies strong links between the lifestyle of respondent and identity of watch. His recommendation for Pierre Cardin signifies the second level of loyalty where “I will recommend this brand” comes. Thus he is loyal to Pierre Cardin through emotional attachment, personification as a watchdog to keep him disciplined, but not through behavior (no repeat purchase). Case #4: 24 years Male, Sales professional. He is a sales professional in working for an international organization. He was born and brought up in Trichy itself. He is an easy going person according to him. He is able to make friends easily. He did his schooling and then later went on to do his diploma in Physics. But he wanted to try out the profession of sales man and thus he joined as a sales agent 2 years ago. Now he is on a higher rank compared with his colleague due to his commitment and passion for his job. He likes to solve the problems and helping people. Going back to his childhood, he says that he is from a middle class family. His friends were rich compared to him and thus got more pocket money than him to spend on their items of choice. But he got just few bucks for every two weeks from his parents. But he never complained about the same. He was satisfied with the lifestyle he had and his friends were very generous too not showing off to him for their affluence. He was very compromising. When probed about interesting experiences about his college life, he specifically mentioned that his friends were all boys and he was not comfortable talking to girls. But he enjoyed the company of his gang. In his gang there were five boys and they had a bike on which they used to go out at times and spend time together. By nature, he was very attached to his family. He loved them and thus he chose his work place same as Trichy. His rest of the friends were not in Trichy except one or two. But his lifestyle is very busy now and he does not get time to visit his friends any time. Whatever time he gets free, he spends them with his family members. As far as his consumption pattern is concerned, we tried to find the difference between the same before and after getting a job. He said that he uses his money wisely and to his fullest satisfaction at the same time. He spares a portion of his salary for his parents and 27


deposits them in a bank and the rest he keeps to himself. Due to this, he has started to spend on personal care and self-grooming products. He said that earlier he used to use the same set of personal care products as used by his parents, but now he uses a separate set as per his choice. Earlier, for buying anything, he had to plan from 10 days or so in advance, but now he can buy whenever he wants and he likes it. When asked about a product which he frequently buys in the recent past, he replied with “Axe deodorant”. He said that he had started using the deodorant from the past 3 months. Then we started discussing about the use of this product. He said that due to his job, he always faced the problem of body odour. Thus he sought suggestion from his friend and he recommended Axe deodorant for him. He bought the deodorant and liked it a lot. He liked it because he was always ready even at late hours of the day to talk to anyone. This increased his confidence at work. Since he has started using the brand he has not changed to any other brand. When asked about the reason for this, he said that this completely satisfies his need and does not find any reason to buy any other deodorant. After using it for 1 year that is a really long time, his colleagues used to say him that they identified his presence by the fragrance of the deodorant itself. Probing into the experience perceived by him by the usage, he said that he felt refreshing after applying it. He liked the experience and sometimes when he goes for a special occasion, he sprays more and more to get more effect. We asked him if he had seen the ad for Axe and he said he had. He immediately remembered many girls running after a guy in the ad. This high level of ad recall brings up a strong brand image in his mind. We tried to find out details about the friend who recommended him Axe. We found that his friend was an affluent person pursuing his distance education in a master degree. His close friend has been using that brand from college days itself. In college, he used to have many friends who were girls. He was a very close friend of his. The respondent uttered the words “I feel like thanking my friend whenever I use Axe” towards the end of the interview. Insights gained From the interview conducted, we find that there is a brand loyalty for the Axe deodorant. This is because in presence of so many alternatives the respondent always buys Axe and no other brand. When asked whether he had tried or not but he said that he did not find the need for trying any other deodorant since he is happy with the current and he does not want to risk his confidence at work. Thus the deodorant has become to define him completely. He sees himself in the deodorant. Thus there is a strong psychological attachment with the brand due to reasons discussed later. He is very satisfied with the brand. Relating the kind of deodorant he prefers can be related to his lifestyle also. After working, he has become free and he wants to fulfill his aspirations which he could not fulfill earlier. Thus deodorant is the category which reinforces his decision to spend, and thus becomes a high involvement category for him. 28


Coming to the brand image, his loyalty is in sync with his underlying motives. In college, he did not have any friends who were girls, so now he wants to have them and thus he is running behind the brand. Deodorant is like addiction so with high amount of repeat purchases, brand loyalty becomes more and more reinforced. Brand experience scale is of many levels: sensory, affective (emotional), behavioral (repeat purchase), and intellectual (self-image congruence and problem solving). He can be said to be in the scale of action inertia where he does not want to try any other brand. Though, he is a guy, who feels a lot of hesitation with girls, he views the brand as the exact opposite to him. And he describes the guy to be cool always, which is not his situation now as he has to work round the clock with little rest. This is also a characteristic which is opposite to him. But he still likes the brand. This can be because he adores the brand as it possesses the characteristics, which he likes and yearns to have. Another possible explanation can be that he has associated the brand with his close friend, who has some characteristics similar to the brand. Since he liked his close friend a lot and felt like thanking him every time he sprayed the deodorant, he strongly associates the brand with his friend and thus is loyal to the brand. As he was loyal to his friend in his college and did not have any problems with any one, the same way he is loyal to the brand. Thus the brand has taken the place of a close friend in his life whom he likes to keep. Reinforcing the brand experience with affective attachment and also adding brand trust due to strong brand associations with friend and proof of functional benefits also, makes him brand loyal towards Axe deodorant. Case #5:45 years female, Professor. Latha is a working woman of 45 years of age. She stays in Trichy. Her husband works in a bank and she has one daughter who is currently studying in engineering first year in Bangalore. She is very hard working. She is a professor of Sanskrit in a private Ladies College in Chennai. Latha is from Chennai, born and brought up there and her parents also stay there. Her college is few km from home and she drives to the college herself. Her house has 2 cars-one for herself, one for her husband. Latha’s lifestyle is very routine type. Since her daughter is in Bangalore, most of the time she stays alone at home after her work. Her work life is like she gets enough number of holidays and she has classes mostly in the morning hours and then she gets back to home. She finishes all her works before leaving for college and when she is back, she watches TV, read newspapers and does home chores. She likes to watch serials and read magazines. At times, when she gets bored, she visits her house to her parents. By nature, Latha is a very balanced type of person who cares about her family first. Then after that she places everyone else. She is happy with her life because she feels she has been successful in raising her daughter who is cultured and her family is very happy and contented. Latha takes pride in admitting that her daughter did very well in her studies and successfully got admission in Bangalore’s best college. She feels that part of her 29


daughter’s success if because of her way of bringing her up. She never allowed her daughter getting wrongly influenced by anything. She is very particular about things in her family and she is the main influencer in the house for all major decisions taken. Her visits to shops for groceries were explored to deduce an idea about her purchasing pattern. She said that she buys her groceries every month. The grocery store she visits is Spencers. She generally visits to the store alone on her way back from college. She makes a list of her purchases and then goes to the store. Sometimes, if by chance, she misses any item, then she goes to the neighborhood store to buy the same. But she said that generally small and not so important items are missed and therefore she does not have a problem in buying from neighborhood store. We tried to find out her category first in groceries which was most important for her. We asked her at first if she was happy with the variety and quality of materials available at Spencers. She immediately uttered that she was very happy with the store and she had many varieties to choose from plus the sales staff was very cooperating. She said that she had recently been to shop for buying her monthly groceries and then she noticed that there were a total of 12 brands of refined oil. We were shocked that she was so updated with brands. We will describe later the reason for this phenomenon. Now, we had got the category so we probed further, as to what refined oil she used to consume. To our surprise, she started telling us a story about her learning about refined oil. According to her, she had been consuming Saffola refined oil for the past 9 years. Recently, she and her husband went for a triglyceride test whereby they found that despite eating food in Saffola, they had high triglyceride and cholesterol in their blood. So they stopped using Saffola. We wanted to find out from the beginning how the family started using Saffola and then held on to it for 9 years. Latha said that she had seen the ads of Saffola long back and then she started consuming the same. She liked it because the taste was good and she saw on the packet the various health benefits. Whenever she used to make food in Saffola and when her daughter was in Trichy, she used to like the smell and appreciate her mother that food was very good. This way, she had become emotional with Saffola. But we wanted to know that all of a sudden, what made the couple go for a heath checkup and tests. We tried to find this out and the respondent mentioned that she had read articles in a lot of magazines many times that refined oil was actually bad for health as against olive oil which is light and does no harm to the heart or the body. At first, according to her, she did not pay attention thinking that it would be some ad, but then when she saw that there were ads of the same in every issue of her magazine, she got worried and started feeling the symptoms of high cholesterol in herself. She started noticing that she used to get very tired even after doing small amount of work. She tried to verify if her husband was also facing the same and she noticed that he was also in the same situation. So, this made them to go for a test and they were shocked at the results of their blood and lipid profile test.

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From then, the family stopped consuming Saffola and switched to olive oil. Till this point, she had decided on the category and the category was new to her. So, she went to the grocery store to find out which olive oil to buy. She was a regular customer of Spencers and thus was in good terms with the sales staff and the shopkeeper. The sales people advised her to go for Bertolli. They mentioned that this was the purest olive oil in their shop. From then onwards, she started buying Bertolli olive oil. She has been using Bertolli olive oil for the past 8 months now. She admits that she feels more energetic and light after switching to this brand of olive oil. Her husband also testified about the positive results of using olive oil to her. She agrees that she has now to pay more price for olive oil due to its expensive nature but she says, that she does not bother much about price when critical issues of health come up. She is ready to pay a higher price for healthy and fit life. She said that after she came to know about the ill effects of Saffola and started using Bertolli, she immediately went to her mother to ask her about the oil they used. They also used Saffolla. So the respondent got their blood and lipid profile tested and found that even they had high levels of Blood pressure, lipid profile was not good and they had high level of blood cholesterol. She asked her parents also to switch to Bertolli olive oil describing the benefits out of her experience. After purchasing olive oil, she now reads each and every article on ill effects of using refined oil and becomes happy that her family is now in safe hands. She said that inside the store, she now paid more attention to the brands available in refined oil. She wanted to critic the positioning of different refined oil brands in the mall. She told us that brand X said that “---- “, but “see what they do”. She got a feeling that all refined oil companies were cheating customers and only olive oil was to her and her family rescue. So she knew very well that a total of 12 brands were available for the refined oil. She also said that she was very happy that she has successfully come out of this trap by companies. She said that she was a little worried about her daughter about the oil in which she eats food. Insights gained We gained a lot of insight from this interview. The respondent had a loyalty towards the brand for nine years consecutively. She was brand loyal because initially when complaints were made by article in magazines, she ignored. When she actually used to feel tired, she did not blame the oil and just ignored. But due to repetitive exposure to article stating the ill effects of refined oil, the respondent got curious about the fact. She did the test and the results of the test shocked her. She had been using Saffolla for the past so many years so ultimately when she got the reports, her belief in those articles started to sprout up. Then she read more and more to find out more about the ill effects

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of refined oil and at the same time she became aware of olive oil. Thus she started to use Bertolli olive oil due to recommendation by the sales people in Spencers. Thus due to non-performance of the brand getting testified through reports, the user got a complete blank out image because of strong brand loyalty towards Saffola earlier. The respondent got confused whom to believe next after her link was broken up with Saffola. There was a break way motivation involved after seeing the reports. Those reports also reinforced the psychological feeling of getting tired too often. This motivation to break way and escapism analogy established a strong link between Latha and Bertolli olive oil. Latha sees Bertolli olive oil as the security guard of her family. She has reached the level of action inertia for Bertolli olive oil due to the testimonials she read from doctors and thus the credibility she associated with the same. Breaking away from that habit is very difficult and requires something like the testimonials of doctors and specialists in any area to convince the customer. The respondent has developed a kind of disloyalty towards all brands of refined oil and would never like to buy any brand of refined oil. Case # 6: 26 years Male, IT professional. Ashok is a 26 year male working in an IT firm in Bangalore. He was born and brought up in Delhi. He did his schooling from Delhi itself. From his school, he has been very studious and has won many awards and prizes. He did his engineering from Delhi and then finally joined an IT firm in Bangalore. He has been working for the past 3 years. He is a tech savvy person so he likes to read news about latest developments in technology sector and thus keeps him updated. He is a kind of person who is hesitant to get along well with new people quickly. He takes a lot of time to get along well with people. He is very shy. His favorite pastimes are reading books, playing computer games and watching television. When speaking about the kind of books, he did not have specific interest for a genre of books. He prefers reading books of both fictional type and non-fictions also. He used to buy books from a nearby store, while he was in his hometown. He mentioned the reason for choosing that store always for buying books as they have a huge collection and also it was convenient for him to buy from that store. Then speaking about his favorite pastimes, he told he liked shopping with his friends. The most frequently purchased product during his shopping is clothes. Among clothes, he prefers the products of Levis, Wrangler, John players, Pepe, etc. When asked about products, he immediately listed these four brands without giving any specific preference. We asked him if he was price conscious. He said that he chose clothes sometimes according to his budget, if it was fixed. And he takes a long time to choose his shirt when he goes shopping. He said that he does not plan for most of his purchases. Just as he goes with his friends to the mall and if he likes something, then he would think of buying it. 32


We asked about his liking for the initial set of brands that he had referred. He immediately mentioned about Levis. He said that the reason for his liking to Levis was because of his good experience with the brand sales people who kept him abreast with all new offers or collections coming up. He liked them informing him about the future events. But when we asked him if he had ever waited for an offer, he said that he does not like to wait generally. If he likes the existing collection and the price, he would buy it immediately without waiting for the offer. Otherwise, he would move away to the next store area for searching for another brand. We further probed to find out which brand of shirt he would choose to wear for a special kind of party organized by his office and friend under both the circumstances. He said that if the party has been thrown by one of his friends, he would prefer to wear any t-shirt or shirt and jeans from his collection. But if the party is from his office side, he will prefer to wear shirts of Van Heusen or Blackberry brand. Interestingly, he did not mention about these two brands earlier. Insights gained By analyzing his interview, few things are clear. First, when asked about brands he purchases, he told about Levis, Wrangler, Pepe only and did not mention anything about Van Heusen or Blackberry. So only these have been in the evoked set of the respondents. It is because of his frequent purchase of casual clothes mostly rather than the formal suits. So with higher repeat purchase of many brands, the consideration set includes only those which are the most recently encountered. Thus we can say that a high frequency of purchase of brands, the brand awareness and visibility in the eyes of the customer increases. The respondent said that he liked the brand Levis. He mentions that the sales people are friendly and they keep him informed about the upcoming offers. This shows that brand attachment and interest can also be influenced by the channel members. So, apart from having a strong set of product and emotional attributes, presence of friendly channel members is also important. He cannot distinguish between the brands he listed earlier or between Van Huesen and Blackberry. He has a strong brand image for these two in terms of formal wears but not unique in nature to each brand. This can be because of the ineffectiveness of the brands to position themselves separately. Thus the consumer gets confused and moves on to a higher categorical level of defining the formal wear for these two brands. As described in the literature, he is a brand repertoire customer since he expresses his interest and purchases a variety of brands in the same product category. Brand repertoire is very common with people shopping in malls. This is because of the availability of more number of alternatives where they get easily distracted the moment they don’t find something they are looking for in one particular brand section. Thus here, the functional characteristic of availability comes to define the foundation steps of 33


formation of brand loyalty (brand affect and brand attachment). If the availability, in terms of variety or anything else is ensured, then repeat purchase can happen for long. But again, in malls, with repeat purchases alone, we cannot say that the person has become brand loyal. In order for the person to get brand loyal, two conditions should be fulfilled in the shopping mall environment. First is that the brand should be repeat purchased with very less inter purchase time. Second, the customer should not move to the other section for the first few repurchases. Only then he becomes a potential loyal customer. This is because, with repeat usage, his learning effect will be more both in terms of his association with the brand and realization of superiority in the brand. With less of interpurchase time, his comfort with the brand, his definition of the brand stabilizes. Finally, he becomes emotional with the brand so much that he sees himself in the same i.e. self-image congruence. Then the person is said to be brand loyal to the brand. Case #7: 24 years Female, Student. Shwetha stays in Trichy. She is a student currently pursuing her MA. She is not married. She has been born and brought up in Madurai from where she did her schooling and then graduated from a university in Tamil Nadu. By nature she is a very rebellious type of person. She does not like to make compromises. She is a very independent type of person. She likes to do things on her own than being dependent on others. According to her, her parents have always been cooperating and encouraging when it came to her pursuing her dreams. They have never forced anything on her. They allow her to make her own decisions. She likes to read and do craft work and glass painting. When we were talking to her, the respondent was seen touching her hair continuously and playing with it. So, this gave us a clue and we started with her hair. We complemented for her thick and long hair. She became very happy. She said that she liked when someone praises her hair. We then did laddering and tried to find out why. Through that we came to know that when someone praised her for her hair, she actually felt she was beautiful and that gave her more confidence and bargaining power in her rebellious nature. This we concluded from the responses we got. She said that she liked to look beautiful because it gave her confidence. Confidence gave her the power to fight for her rights. And hence in other words, good hair was directly related to her support of rebellious nature. Then we allowed her to speak and she went on to describe the importance of her hair in her beauty. She said that if her hair looked messy then she could never look beautiful. Then we asked her the secret for her beautiful hair. She said that she had tried many shampoos but unfortunately they all led to hair fall while washing. Then she finally decided to stick to one that was best suited for the hair. We asked her which shampoo

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she had decided to stick to and she said Amway Satining. She has now been using this since 1.5 years. Then we started the discussion about the brand. We asked her what she liked in that shampoo and she said that it was very natural to feel, conditions her hair and she felt very soft after applying the shampoo. She could actually see the results of lesser hair fall during washing. She said that the bottle is not very attractive when she first saw the shampoo but she had no idea that the content inside was going to be so good. We asked the respondent if the brand name was hidden and the shampoo given to her would she be able to recognize the brand or not. The respondent said that Amway had a distinctive smell which can aid her in realizing the shampoo. Then we asked the respondent that if she was presented with a new shampoo with same or better features as Amway, would she try and change or not. The respondent replied that to judge whether hair fall is happening or not, she needed to apply the shampoo over multiple usages and if she sees that her hair fall had actually decreased, then she would change. She said that she had been using a number of shampoos before and none of them suited her hair like Amway. Then immediately she said that she was paying a lot of money for Amway. She was paying INR 375 for the bottle. Then we asked the respondent that if she were to describe Amway as a person, then what role it would have. She said that she would describe the shampoo like a mentor. As a mentor guides and makes sure that his mentee does well, the same way Amway is making sure that the respondent’s hair looks good and they don’t fall. The shampoo takes in charge of her beauty. To uncover further the fitting of brand in the life of the respondent we asked Mayura what would she do if the agent from whom she purchased the shampoo changed her agency. The respondent replied that she would look for another route to get Amway from some other agent. After probing, we found that the agent was respondent’s aunt. We wanted to uncover the forgiving capability of such a heavy functional product by the respondent. We asked her that if some day, she found that after applying Amway, her hair started to fall again, what she would do. Her reply was that she would try another sachet of the same brand of shampoo and check if there is hair fall or not. If the condition persists, then she would change the brand. Lastly, we asked the respondent that if Amway was stolen from her, what she would do. She replied that she would get another bottle and not feel bad or like something close is gone because she does not mind sharing the shampoo with others. Insights gained First of all we can say that there are strong sensory attachments with the brand that build a strong brand experience. The respondent has a brand trust with Amway out of her experience and she believes that no other product can perform better than Amway. As from the literature, we can say that once brand trust sets in, the ability to pay a premium for the brand increases. We can see the same thing happening in practice here.

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The respondent had already tried many shampoos in one range, and they all did not work for her hair, she had to increase her price range and willingness to pay that resulted in her stepping up to Amway. But if she is offered a product which is in same quality as Amway, then she would change because then the incentive for her to change would be the price. Thus the evaluative criteria for her is functional benefit of the product first and then the price. Moreover, since she has upgraded herself to a new higher price range, if any competitive brand has to make her switch, then they have to make extra efforts in communicating to her that the new brand is better than Amway, the product has to have additional or same benefits as Amway and also offer some price off to induce change. The respondent is willing to forego the new shampoo offered by her aunt when she changes the agency of Amway, against all social norms and still stay with Amway. This is the case of intellectual brand loyalty also where Amway is solving her problem and she is ready to compromise and even go against her relations to a very little extent in order to stay with Amway. This is a true brand loyalty exhibited. This is because throughout the interview process, the respondent suggested us also to try the shampoo and ask her for more if we liked. When asked about defect and then her reply about repurchase of a sachet to try further that the shampoo is really gone ineffective, itself shows that when emotional ties are built up with a product based on functional attributes, then only sometimes, the functional aspect gets overshadowed and emotional part takes over. Here also same thing is seen. The respondent is ready to take pains to try another sachet to confirm her allegation. This confirmation is needed because of the unique position of the product in customer’s life. Had it been any other shampoo, as we saw earlier in the interview, the respondent would have immediately changed the shampoo. Hence there is a difference in how the brands are excused and forgiven when they are close to the customer and there is an actual Anthropomorphization of the brand (as a mentor here). Managerial Implications Now we will look from the side of the company and suggest measures for managers in marketing. One thing which is coming up with all these interviews conducted is that it is very difficult to ensure brand loyalty in today’s arena where there is a proliferation of so many numbers of brands. In such a scenario, the understanding of complex consumer psychology and behaviour becomes crucial for the marketers to target and retain their customers as their asset. From case #1, the company can keep the brand loyalty by marketing strategies based on variety promotion, emotional connection. The variety promotion will make the person more attracted to the brand and emotional connect can help in forming a self-image congruence with the brand. The formula for conformity motivation should be employed to seed brand loyalty. But this takes time for development. For categories like jeans, where functional attributes are not very pronounced, emotional benefits are more 36


important. The reason for trying different brands is actually a self-fulfilling inner desire for trying everything possible. This will happen with new users but the goal is to get her back to our brand after trying various other brands. This is possible through below the line advertising, using celebrity endorsements for fulfilling the self-desire to become special, and positioning the brand uniquely. The more emotional connects established with the users, the more brand loyal they tend to become in the future. Also, the time between the purchase of our brand and others’ brands must be increased so that the person develops some kind of loyalty with usage and feels risk averse in trying out another brand. This can happen by giving them incentives to buy more for less for new users. An important point which we can make here is that with the increased usage of a particular brand, there starts the emotional benefit realization if using the brand and from then on, the person hesitates to try any other brand. This results in brand loyalty which has to be further sustained through direct marketing and emotional self-image congruence campaigns by the company. Same as case #1, we will try to revisit the managerial implications for each type of product-market in brief. As for case #2, the company should establish functional benefits first and then bank on emotional connections for utilitarian goods like dish wash. This makes them high involvement for the consumer. So basically, the marketer is trying to convert a low involvement customer to a highly involved customer. This is because, with high involvement, comes the major role of emotional part and brand affect. So when the brand affect and emotional ties comes into the picture, the susceptibility of practicing multi brand loyalty or brand switching reduces. As for case #3, market structure leads to a different brand image from what the ads say or the promotional campaigns say. For small cities, the company should make an effort for on ground activation programs to make the customers feel the product and then learn and do it. This could be the probable means end chain for the customer. This is necessary because in small towns especially where the effect of advertisements is slightly over shadowed by the personal recommends of the shopkeeper and retail stores, the purchase behaviour over rides the effects of promotion due to habitual buying. Hence, this over riding phenomenon should be avoided. As for case #4, for customer who exhibits loyalty in these cases, where the role of hedonic benefits is more important, the company should seed in brand loyalty first through advertising and promotion campaigns and reinforce the belief that they have taken a right decision to get that brand. The marketer must then try moving those customers up the ladder through up selling techniques. As for case #5, the process of development of brand loyalty towards Saffola started 9 years back when she saw the ads for Saffola. She started to use the same and then slowly started developing brand loyalty for the same. She started to see less of functional benefits in the product which otherwise rests purely on functionality and 37


performance. But when she encountered the newspaper and magazine article testifying the recommendation of doctors, credibility factor came in and out of curiosity she just wanted to check her health coming back to functional benefits and here Saffola failed. thus she became highly disloyal and then switched to Bertolli as mentioned how. so the companies whose products are functional and especially towards health must make sure that they deliver those values and not just get busy with setting up emotional ties. Credibility building at intervals for these products becomes a necessity to keep the link between functional benefit realizations to affective attachment strengthened. it also points that how companies should make efforts to establish brand images through the help of channel members. As for case #6, channel members can influence brand image. An entire category of thoughts get associated with the consumer's mind but they are unable to distinguish between those closely spaced clusters. Here also, the respondent was not able to distinguish between two sets of brands (Pepe and Wrangler) in each of the classes. It is not necessary for the brand to be in consideration set for driving high purchase. It can also sustain itself in the life of the consumer when there is a strong and well defined position for the brand. Brand repertoire actually leads to sometimes seasonal variations in sale of different brands and the consumer is unable to reach till the level of true brand loyalty for any brand in particular. A preference for one brand in the case of brand repertoire is not sufficient to be brand loyal. As for case #7, this talks about how a consumer moves to a premium offer when he not able to solve his problems, especially when the problems are such that they attack at her true values of looking great and gaining confidence. The extent to which brands can be excused depends on the seriousness of the problem. As we saw in the case of Saffola, the lady was not able to excuse the brand because it was directly related to her health. But here the topic is of her beauty and her feeling of confidence which rates lesser than health benefits. Moreover, as she was so much disturbed with the other shampoos earlier, she wanted stability in her life. For attaining that stability due to the escapism motivation, Amway should educate more about product benefits as was relevant from the following diagram we discussed in the literature.

Source: Exploring social motivations for brand loyalty: Conformity versus escapism by Lauren I. Labrecque, Anjala S. Krishen, Stephan Grzeskowiak: Journal of Brand Management

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Summary We have seen the various samples of interview process. After every sample interview, the insights gained from the interview have been listed. The various cases which were interviewed gave different ideas about the brand loyalty. But in all the cases, some inherent drivers were found to be present which influenced the customers and induced the brand loyalty in them. And mostly the respondents had found the characteristics of brand related to themselves or someone who is close with them or the characteristics which they like to possess. The drivers are dependent on the individual consumers. So generally it cannot be said that the brand should possess specifically these characteristics to induce loyalty. And another important characteristic to be considered is the transition time taken to become a brand loyalist. The transition time also depends on the individual customers only. A general observation regarding the transition time is that the customer takes the time according to how he gets well with other people. This affects the transition time to a significant level. The brand attributes should be strong enough to create trust among the customers leading to brand loyalty. So this factor also affects the time taken for that transition. For some products, the benefits can be understood after a long period of time, whereas for some products it can be understood in just one or two trials. So it also depends on the product category. References 1. M. Mellens, M.G. Deikimpe and J.B E.M. Steeniump: "A review of brand-loyalty Measures in Marketing" :TijdschriftvoorEcononiie en Management Vol. XLI, 4, 1996 2. Oriol Iglesias, Jatinder J. Singh, Joan M. Batista-Foguet: "The role of brand experience and affective commitment in determining brand loyalty ",: Brand Management Vol. 18, 8, 570–582 3. Stern and Kathy Hammond in their paper on “The Relationship between Customer Loyalty and Purchase Incidence”: Marketing Letters, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Feb., 2004), pp. 5-19 4. a. . PankajAggarwal, Ann L Mc Gill: " When Brands Seem Human, Do Humans Act Like Brands? Automatic Behavioural Priming Effects of Brand Anthropomorphization" : © 2011 by Journal of Consumer research, Inc, Vol 39, August 2012 4 b. Susan Fournier, Claudio Alvarez, " Brands as Relationship partners: Warmth, comptence and in-between", Journal of Consumer Psychology 2012 177-185 5 Richard L. Oliver: “whence customer loyalty”: Journal of Marketing, Vol. 63, Fundamental Issues and Directions for Marketing(1999), pp. 33-44 6 TülinErdem, Joffre Swait, Susan Broniarczyk, DipankarChakravarti, JeanNoëlKapferer, Michael Keane, John Roberts, Jan-Benedict E. M. Steenkamp and 39


FlorianZettelmeyer," Brand Equity, Consumer Learning and Choice",: Marketing Letters, Vol. 10, No. 3, HEC Choice Symposium (Aug., 1999), pp. 301-318 7 ArjunChaudhuri& Morris B. Hoibrook, "The Chain of Effects from Brand Trust and Brand Affect to Brand Performance: The Role of Brand Loyalty", Journat of Marketing Vol. 65 (April 2001), 81-93 8 C.Whan Park, Deborah J. MacInnis, Joseph Priester, Andreas B. Eisingerich, & Dawn Iacobucci," Brand Attachment and Brand Attitude Strength: Conceptual and Empirical Differentiation of Two Critical Brand Equity Drivers",Journal of Marketing Vol. 74 (November 2010), 1–17 9 Lauren I. Labrecque, Anjala S. Krishen, Stephan Grzeskowiak," Exploring social motivations for brand loyalty: Conformity versus escapism", Journal of Brand Management Vol. 18, 7, 457–472 10. Susan Fournier, “consumers and their brands”, Journal of Consumer Research 11.R.K. Srivastava, “Development of brand loyalty factors in the age group 18-24”, 12. Do growing brands win young customers? By Katherine Anderson and Byron Sharp: International Journal of Market Research Vol. 52 Issue 4© 2010 13.John U. Farley in his paper “why brand loyalty varies over products”: Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Nov., 1964), pp. 9-14 14. J. Douglas McConnell: "The Development of Brand Loyalty: An Experimental Study" : Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Feb., 1968), pp. 13-19 15. Donald G. Morrison: " Interpurchase Time and Brand Loyalty": Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Aug., 1966), pp. 289-291 16. HaiChe and P.B. (SEETHU) Seetharaman: " Speed of Replacement”: Modeling Brand Loyalty Using Last-Move Data" : Journal of Marketing Research Vol. XLVI (August 2009), 494–505 17. Jeffrey S. Podoshen and Susan A. Andrzejewski: " An Examination of the Relationships Between Materialism, Conspicuous Consumption, Impulse Buying, and Brand Loyalty": Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, vol. 20, no. 3 (summer 2012), pp. 319–333. 18. Steve Worthington, Rebekah Russell-Bennett, Charmine H ä rtel : " A tridimensional approach for auditing brand loyalty" : Brand Management Vol. 17, 4, 243–253 19. Son K. Lam, Michael Ahearne, Ye Hu, &NielsSchillewaert: “Resistance to Brand Switching When a Radically New Brand Is Introduced: A Social Identity Theory Perspective”: Journal of Marketing Vol. 74 (November 2010), 128–146 40


20. AamnaShakeelAbbasi, Ali Muslim Bin Aqeel, Ali NaseerAwan :“The impact of advertising on brand loyalty with the moderation of consumer buying behaviour; a conceptual framework" 21. NeeruPaharia,AnatKeinan, Jill Avery, Juliet B. Schor :“Underdog Effect: The Marketing of Disadvantage and Determination through Brand Biography”: 2010 by Journal of Consumer Research. Inc. • Vol. 37 • February 2011 22. Vicki Lane and Robert Jacobson: "The Reciprocal Impact of Brand Leveraging: Feedback Effects from Brand Extension Evaluation to Brand Evalution": Marketing Letters, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Jul., 1997), pp. 261-271 23. Jagdish N. Sheth : “A Factor Analytical Model of Brand Loyalty”: Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Nov., 1968), pp. 395-404 24. Son K. Lam, Michael Ahearne, Ye Hu, &NielsSchillewaert : “Resistance to Brand Switching When a Radically New Brand Is Introduced: A Social Identity Theory Perspective” : Journal of Marketing, Vol. 74 (November 2010),pp. 128–146 25. Peter J. Danaher, Isaac W. Wilson and Robert A. Davis: “A Comparison of Online and Offline Consumer Brand Loyalty” : Marketing Science, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 461-476 26. Reinartz and Kumar :Harvard Business Review – “Increasing Customer Loyalty” (Indian Edition), pp 93-119. 27. Doglascolt : “When brands become icons”. 28. J. Jo ˘sko Brakus, Bernd H. Schmitt, & Lia Zarantonello, “Brand Experience: What Is It? How Is It Measured? Does It Affect Loyalty?”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 73 (May 2009), 52–68

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