Brand Loyalty and Role of Social Media

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Running Head: Brand Loyalty

Chapter-2 Literature Review
Introduction
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s
good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. The legal term for brand is trademark.
However, in public relations, the term “brand” may identify one item, a family of items, or all
items of that seller. (Marketing.com, 2012)
Brands have three primary functions: navigation, reassurance and engagement. (Wheeler,
Alina, 2009)
• Navigation: Brands help consumers choose from a vast array of similar selections.
• Reassurance: Brands communicate the intrinsic quality of the product or service
and reassure customers that they have made the right decision.
• Engagement: Brands use distinctive imagery, language and associations to
encourage customers to identify with the brand.
A brand is essentially the identifier that differentiates a product or service from its
competitors. Marty Neumeier, author of “The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance
Between Business Strategy and Design,” summed it up nicely by stating: “brand is a
person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company.”
Branding is simply the process to build awareness of a product or service and extent
customer loyalty.
Brand loyalty cannot exist without a brand; therefore it is important to understand what a
brand is. The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol,
or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or
groups of seller and to differentiate them from those of the competition.” (Argenti & 
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Drunkenmiller, 2004 p.368). A strong brand communicates to its customers that it is able to meet
the customer’s needs and will continue to be accepted by consumer during states of high
competition (Ettenson & Knowles, 2008; Nandan, 2005)
Brands have traditionally focused on the functional attributes of its products. Now, firms
are starting to focus on the emotional attributes, of its users that give consumers an overall brand
experience that can be defined as the consumer’s behavioral response and internal response that
they take away after encountering the brand’s design, packaging, identity, environment, and
communication efforts (Brakus, Bernd, Schmitt, Zarantello, 2009).
Although there are many brand loyalty models in the literature, scholars do not
completely agree on what brand loyalty is (Holbrook, 2001). Theories based on cognitive
psychology and attitude has largely guided the work on brand loyalty (Dick & Basu, 1994;
Fournier & Yao, 1997). Wilkie (1994) defined brand loyalty as “a favorable attitude towards,
and consistent purchase of, a particular brand” (p.18). However, other researchers argued that
this definition was too simple for brand loyalty in terms of consumer behavior.
Other researchers used Oliver’s (1999) definition of brand loyalty: “A deeply held
commitment to re-buy or re-patronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future,
thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same brand-set purchasing, despite situational
influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behavior” (p.34). This
definition of brand loyalty represents the intention to act in buying certain products such as
behavioral intent, which is the combination of attitude and behavior (Oliver, 1999).
For the purpose of this paper brand loyalty will be defined as the integration of attitude,
emotions, and behavior to continually purchase a brand based on a previous experience because 
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the brand offers the correct image, price, quality and attributes (Kabiraj & Shanmugan, 2011;
Olson & Peter, 2010).
Even though the idea of brand loyalty was first introduced in 1923 by Copland, brand
loyalty was first seen in literature by G.H.Brown (1952) in Advertising Age. Brown said that
brand loyalty is strictly behavioral and could be shown by a consumer’s repeat purchases.
However, in the 1960s, attitude was added to the brand loyalty construct by Cunningham (1967)
who used an attitudinal measure called perceived brand loyalty. Day (1969) agreed with
Cunningham that brand loyalty is based on attitude and behavior. He also emphasized that
previous research has not distinguished from true loyalty and spurious loyalty. Jacoby and Kyner
(1973) argued that repeat purchases should not be the determinant factor of brand loyalty
because there could be other underlying factors.
Newman and Werbel (1973) stated that brand loyalty should consist of the consumer’s
resistance to switch to other brands. Jacoby and Chestnut (1978) were given substantial credit for
the following brand loyalty definition: “the biased and (i.e, .non-random), behavioral response
(i.e. purchase), expressed over time, by some decision-making unit with respect to one or more
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