The importance of brand equity to customer loyalty
| Published date | 01 June 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/10610420410546934 |
| Pages | 217-227 |
| Date | 01 June 2004 |
| Author | Steven A. Taylor,Kevin Celuch,Stephen Goodwin |
| Subject Matter | Marketing |
The importance of brand
equity to customer
loyalty
Steven A. Taylor
Kevin Celuch and
Stephen Goodwin
The authors
Steven A. Taylorand Stephen Goodwin are both Professors of
Marketing at the Department of Marketing, College of Business,
Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, USA.
Kevin Celuch is Blair Chair of Business Science in the
Department of Management and Marketing, School of Business,
University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, Indiana, USA.
Keywords
Brand equity, Customer loyalty
Abstract
This study involved a nation-wide sample of industrial customers
of heavy equipment manufacturers. The results suggest that
brand equity and trust are consistently the most important
antecedents to both behavioral and attitudinal forms of
customer loyalty. There is also evidence that the models
underlying the formation of behavioral versus attitudinal forms
of customer loyalty may vary across research settings. The results
suggest that industrial equipment marketers may consider
moving beyond a focus on satisfaction in relationship marketing
strategies toward integrated strategies that foster brand equity
and trust in their customer base as well.
Electronic access
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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
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www.emeraldinsight.com/1061-0421.htm
An executive summary for managers and
executive readers can be found at the end of
this article
Introduction
Brand asset management is an area of increasing
importance to marketers today, particularly as
organizations move toward attempts to
communicate ever complex and intangible
messages as part of brand management strategies
(Davis, 2000; Goodchild and Callow, 2001). One
of the many interesting questions facing today’s
brand managers concerns how to develop a better
understanding of the appropriate relationship
between constructs such as brand equity and
customer loyalty, particularly in relation to the
myriad of known antecedents to customer loyalty
in the marketing literature. In this study we assess
the relative importance of many of the known
antecedents to customer loyalty, including brand
equity, in a nationwide B2B industrial setting. Our
study contributes to existing knowledge by
simultaneously assessing the relative influences of
satisfaction, value, resistance to change, brand
affect, trust, and brand equity on perceptions of
customer loyalty using structural equation
analysis. Thus, we are able to gain insight as to the
relative importance of these known antecedents
important to the formation of customer loyalty in
our research setting. Given that we empirically
assess our research model relative to a (nation-
wide) single industrial setting, we consider the
results of our study tentative until independently
verified in alternative research settings.
The remainder of this study is divided into four
sections. First, we will present the theoretical
underpinnings of our research model. We will also
identify our research hypotheses in this section.
Second, we will present the methods used to
empirically validate our research model. We
explicate a description of our population of
interest, desired sample, and statistical methods in
this section. Third, we present the results of our
statistical analyses. Finally, we discuss the
managerial and research implications of our
reported study.
The research model
Figure 1 presents the research model which
concerns ascertaining the relative importance of
the know antecedents of customer loyalty. The
emerging service literature suggests that customer
brand loyalty is generally considered the ultimate
desirable marketing-based outcome from strategic
marketing activities (Chaudhuri, 1999; Gwinner
Journal of Product & Brand Management
Volume 13 · Number 4 · 2004 · pp.217-227
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 1061-0421
DOI 10.1108/10610420410546934
217
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