An Examination of the Effect of Product Performance on Brand Reputation, Satisfaction and Loyalty

Abstract

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

Loyalty in the supermarket

“…In turn, the corporate image should affect effective behavioral intentions, such as loyalty, because consumers should prefer those stores whose image has a positive meaning in their memory. Selnes (1993) hypothesized this result for brand reputation and found consistent results. According to this author, corporate image is a construct that is similar to the self-concept construct in psychology, in which both refer to a set of thoughts and feelings having an object as reference (e.g.…”

“…Since consumers could evoke past experiences (Keller, 1993) in a future purchase situation, a previously constructed image could be an explanatory variable of loyalty, because image has to do with how customers perceive an organization based on experience or impressions and how these perceptions create a set of associations that contribute to a total picture of the organization (Selnes, 1993). In turn, the corporate image should affect effective behavioral intentions, such as loyalty, because consumers should prefer those stores whose image has a positive meaning in their memory.…”

The Impact of Service Quality on Customer Satisfaction, Customer Loyalty and Brand Image: Evidence from Hotel Industry of Pakistan

“…Consequently, these associations are building up into the consumers mind from the direct experience of service they have, after those experiences they make conclusion by contrasting their previous experiences with the company and the set associations (Martinez &Pina, 2003). There are many empirical evidences that proved that customer loyalty and brand image have positive correlation with each other (Selnes, 1993;Zins, 2001). Whereas, other researches proved positive contact on brand image by that service quality (Brodie et al, 2009) and customer satisfaction comprise positive relationship with brand image.…”

A study on relationship of brand characteristics and customer satisfaction with brand loyalty

“…In commercial markets, the brand image is expected to play an essential role, especially where it is difficult to distinguish the products or services based on concrete quality features. Studies of Selnes (1993), Zeithaml (1988) and Zins (2001) recommend that brand image can influence the customer loyalty. This lays the foundation for the next hypothesis.…”