Consumer s’ true brand loyalty: the central role of commitment
La vraie fidélité du consommateur à la marque : Le rôle central de l'engagement
Résumé
In current highly competitive environments, improving consumers’ loyalty to brands allows firms to secure a comfortable long-term position in the market-place. This article aims at placing the issue of brand loyalty within a larger perspective than a set of repetitive discrete transactions between consumers and brands. Two different approaches for analysing brand loyalty are then discussed: the downstream one, based on observing consistent purchases of a brand over a period of time and the upstream approach, which focuses on the motives that are behind a repeat purchasing of a brand. The relevance of the latter approach is then shown by highlighting the crucial role of the consumers’ commitment to the brand in better understanding the loyalty phenomenon. Therefore, our article proposes an integrative conceptual framework of true brand loyalty including its main cognitive and affective causes and effects.