The Impact of Brand Commitment on Loyalty to Retail Service Brands

Abstract This paper incorporates the developing body of literature in relationship marketing to the study of brand loyalty. Relationship marketing literature has established that customer commitment is a central, complex construct consisting of at least an affective component and a continuance component. This study examined the extent to which affective and continuance commitment serve as mediators of the brand satisfaction—loyalty intentions relationship. The study found that, in two retail service brand settings, the two components of commitment fully mediate the relationship between brand satisfaction and both repurchase intentions and advocacy intentions. In addition, the study found that affective commitment to the brand was strongly and positively related to both repurchase intentions for the brand and willingness to act as an advocate on behalf of the brand. Continuance commitment was at best only weakly but positively related to repurchase intentions, but negatively related to advocacy intentions for the brand. Resume Le present article combine les publications de plus en plus nombreuses relatives au marketing cible et l'etude de la fidelite a la marque. Les publications relatives au marketing cible ont etabli que l'engagement du client est un concept central et complexe qui comprend au moins une composante affective et une composante de continuation. Cette etude examine dans quelle mesure l'engagement affectif et l'engagement de continuation mediatisent la satisfaction par rapport a la marque—rapport d'intentions de fidelite. L'etude revele que dans deux contextes de service de detail de marque, les deux composantes d'engagement mediatisent completement le rapport entre la satisfaction par rapport a la marque d'une part, les intentions de rachat et les intentions de promotion d'autre part. Par ailleurs, l'engagement affectif a la marque est fortement et positivement relie aux intentions de rachat de la marque et a la volonte de recommander et de defendre la marque. L'engagement de continuation est au mieux relie uniquement, faiblement mais positivement aux intentions de rachat. Cependant, il est negativement relie aux intentions de recommandation pour la marque.

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