Product involvement/brand loyalty: is there a link?
| Published date | 01 February 2003 |
| Date | 01 February 2003 |
| Pages | 22-38 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/10610420310463117 |
| Author | Pascale Quester,Ai Lin Lim |
| Subject Matter | Marketing |
Product involvement/brand
loyalty: is there a link?
Pascale Quester
The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
Ai Lin Lim
The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
Keywords Products, Involvement, Brand loyalty, Consumer behaviour,
Consumer attitudes
Abstract In an empirical examination of the link between product involvement and
brand loyalty, a convenience sample of 253 students were asked to complete a
questionnaire relating to two products which had been found in preliminary
qualitative research to be associated with contrasted levels of involvement. The factor
structure of involvement was found to vary between the two product categories
(sneakers and pens). Furthermore, the link between product involvement and brand
loyalty was found to involve different aspects of product involvement for each of the
products concerned. Hence, future researchers in the area should be mindful that
product involvement and brand loyalty are not universal constructs: they should be
examined within specific consumer and product parameters.
Introduction
Product involvement and brand loyalty are two important concepts believed
to explain a significant proportion of consumer purchase choices. Several
studies (e.g. Traylor, 1981, 1983; Park, 1996; LeClerc and Little, 1997;
Iwasaki and Havitz, 1998), have examined the relationship between product
involvement and loyalty, albeit under other names. For instance, Traylor
(1981) uses the terms ``ego involvement'' and ``brand commitment'' whereas
Park (1996) refers to ``involvement'' and ``attitudinal loyalty''. Importantly,
studies examining the relationship between product involvement and brand
loyalty have remained conceptual in nature and empirical investigations of
the product involvement/brand loyalty link are lacking.
The central premise of the literature examining the relationship between
loyalty and product involvement is that consumers who are more involved
with a particular brand are also more committed and hence more loyal to that
brand. High involvement has also been suggested as a precondition to
loyalty. Indeed, some authors have argued that the cognitive definition of
brand loyalty represents commitment and therefore involvement with the
brand.
The product involvement/brand loyalty link: a review
In a rare empirical examination of the issue (an experimental study of
free-standing insert coupons in newspapers), LeClerc and Little (1997) found
that brand loyalty interacted with product involvement. The authors stated
that repeat purchase behaviour for a high-involvement product was an
indicator of brand loyalty, whereas repeat purchase for a low-involvement
product was simply habitual purchase behaviour, without elaborating clearly
on the relationship between these constructs. In a similar vein, Park (1996),
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Brand loyalty
22 JOURNAL OF PRODUCT & BRAND MANAGEMENT, VOL. 12 NO. 1 2003, pp. 22-38, #MCB UP LIMITED, 1061-0421, DOI 10.1108/10610420310463117
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in a study on leisure activities, found that involvement and attitudinal loyalty
were highly correlated.
However, Iwasaki and Havitz (1998) later argued that Parks' findings of a
correlation between involvement and attitudinal loyalty did not determine
whether involvement precedes loyalty. Rather, they proposed that
individuals go through sequential psychological processes in order to
become loyal participants in leisure or recreational activities. The sequential
process is shown in a simplified version of the authors' conceptual
framework displayed in Figure 1. Iwasaki and Havitz (1998) also argued that
highly loyal people tended to exhibit high levels of involvement and that
individual and social-situational factors, such as personal values or beliefs,
social and cultural norms, influenced the feedback effects of behavioural
loyalty. To date, however, this framework has remained untested.
The general convention in the literature appears to be that one's
involvement in a product class is directly related to one's commitment (or
loyalty) to a brand within that product class. Furthermore, the more focal
a product class is to an individual's ego or sense of identity, the stronger
the psychological attachment he/she will exhibit to a particular brand
within that product class. Conversely, the more peripheral the product
class is to the individual's ego, the lower the attachment to the brand. One
reason for this is that a consumer exhibiting a low involvement in a given
product category would more probably have a large consideration set and
therefore his or her brand commitment would be low. Hence, brand
switching would be more frequent compared with another consumer for
whom this product category is highly involving. This suggests that
consumers with smaller consideration sets of highly involving products
would also exhibit higher brand commitment. This view, however, is also
rather simplistic, relying on the size of the consideration set rather than
the actual relationship between the constructs.
In a later work, however, Traylor (1983) stated that brand commitment is
generally not directly related to product involvement, suggesting that it is
possible to consider cases where low brand commitment is coupled with high
product involvement and high brand commitment with low product
involvement. This is because involvement and loyalty are consumer-defined
phenomena, as opposed to product-defined. As a result, Traylor (1983)
believed that involvement and commitment can each be thought of as a
continuum along which consumers are distributed. Unfortunately, despite
some quantitative evidence, the small sample size and the composition of the
sample precluded Traylor from generalising any of his findings.
Figure 1. The sequential psychological process of the relationships between
involvement, psychological commitment and behavioural loyalty: a simplified
version
Sequential psychological
processes
Involvement and loyalty are
consumer-defined
phenomena
JOURNAL OF PRODUCT & BRAND MANAGEMENT, VOL. 12 NO. 1 2003 23
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