Proposing a Comprehensive Model to Explore and Evaluate the Factors Influencing Egyptian Consumers’ Brand Loyalty: An Empirical Study in the Home Appliances Sector (Published)

The home appliance industry in the Egyptian market is currently witnessing rapid growth with very intense competition. In light of this fierce competition, the concept of brand loyalty has emerged as an important issue that should be carefully studied. Although manufacturers realize the importance of this concept, there is still no agreement on the factors that influence it. Furthermore, a lot of previous studies have examined the role of mediator variables in generating brand loyalty and conceptualized these mediating variables as a necessary commitment. However, there may be no need for such intermediary factors, rather the relationship can be direct between the antecedents of brand loyalty and brand loyalty. As such, this study aims to (1) develop an integrated conceptual model to discover the factors that Egyptian consumers rely on to build their loyalty in the context of home appliances, and (2) detect the relative importance of each factor in achieving overall consumer brand loyalty. To fulfill these objectives, the study proposes six factors namely brand trust, brand image, after-sales service, customer satisfaction, perceived quality, and brand experience. The novelty in this study lies in proposing one integrated model that includes the main determinants responsible for brand loyalty and studying them together instead of studying the influence of each determinant separately as in previous studies. In addition, till now there is no clear insight into whether the proposed factors have a direct or mediating effect on brand loyalty; this research attempts to answer this controversial question. For this purpose, the survey method is used as the primary data collection. 400 questionnaires were randomly distributed to home appliance buyers living in Alexandria city. The collected data were analyzed statistically using SPSS software. Correlation analysis, multiple linear regression, and stepwise regression were used to reach our results. The main findings of the study indicated that there is a significant and direct relationship between all proposed factors and consumer brand loyalty. However, after-sales service, perceived quality, brand trust, and customer satisfaction are notable determinants and have the highest relative importance on Egyptian consumer brand loyalty concerning home appliances.

Keywords: Brand, Brand Image, Brand Trust, Repeat purchases, brand loyalty

Brand Trust and Brand Loyalty, an Empirical Study in Indonesia Consumers (Published)

ABSTRACT: Brand loyalty has become an important issue in marketing. There are many research has been conducted to examine this issue. Brand loyalty is part of relationship marketing.  In the theory of relationship marketing, there is a strong correlation between brand loyalty, trust in a brand and commitment.  This research analyses the effects of brand reputation, brand predictability, brand satisfaction, brand liking, brand experience, trust in the company and brand competence to brand loyalty, with trust in a brand as a mediating variable. This model use a model proposed by Lau and Lee (2000). Lau and Lee (2000) use this model to measure consumer’s loyalty in a low involvement product. This research uses a different setting. My setting is in a high involvement product, which is cellular phone consumer. This research uses non-random sampling methods (convenience sampling) in order to gain data. I collect 150 respondent, but only 134 questionnaires are complete. After conduct an out layer test I have only 109 respondent left to analyze. To analyze the data, this research uses hierarchical regression analyses. The result shows that only to variables have significant effect to brand loyalty, they are consumer’s trust in a company and brand satisfaction. While, the hypotheses that trust in brand is a mediating variable is support.  The managerial implications of this research are, first, a company which produces a high involvement product must conduct an effective marketing communication with their costumer. Second, a company should increase their service so that consumer’s will satisfy with their brand.

Keywords: Brand, Brand Satisfaction, Brand Trust, brand loyalty

THE ROLE OF RELATIONSHIP MARKETING IN BUILDING CUSTOMERS’ LOYALTY- A CASE STUDY OF THE MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATION INDUSTRY IN SOUTHERN PUNJAB-PAKISTAN (Published)

The objective of this research paper is to assess the role of relationship marketing in winning customers’ loyalty in the mobile Phone industry in Pakistan. De-regularization of the telecommunication sector in Pakistan has created huge competition to capture the maximum market share. For this purpose, industry marketers and planners are exercising various relationship marketing strategies to attract new customers and retain the old ones. To analyze the role of relationship marketing in building customers’ loyalty, the author has selected four independent variables such as service quality, price perception, brand image and value offers while customer’s loyalty is taken as dependent variable. A structured questionnaire containing 24 closed ended questions was developed to collect data from the field. The data was analyzed through Likert- scale. This scale is defined with 5 options of strongly agree on 5 and strongly disagree on 1. In order to check the reliability of the variables, a reliability test was conducted on 20 respondents of different age groups with different occupations. The results of this test showed positive significant relationship among the variables. The results of this study are robust and consistent with previous studies. This study provides in-depth knowledge about mobile users and cellular companies operating in Pakistan can take benefit from it.The finding of this research study is expected to be beneficial for the managers of the mobile operators in their decisions relating to the relationship marketing issues that are connected with the needs of the customers. These needs and interests of the customers, in turn, can increase their revenue and profits in the long-run.

Keywords: Brand, Customer, Loyalty, Marketing, Quality, Relationship, Satisfaction, telecommunications