ABSTRACT
Building customer brand loyalty through branding strategies to sustain competitiveness in the retail industry has gathered momentum among researchers. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of brand personality and consumer brand identification on customer brand loyalty via the mediating variables of perceived service quality, perceived value, brand trust, brand commitment, and word-of-mouth communication among Malaysian department stores’ customers. Using a self-structured questionnaire, 381 usable responses are considered for data analysis by applying a covariance-based structural equation modeling approach. The results of exploratory factor analysis show that sincerity, followed by sophistication and competence, are the most significant dimensions used to predict brand personality in department stores. The outcomes also reveal that brand personality indirectly influences customer brand loyalty via consumer brand identification. Furthermore, perceived service quality, perceived value, brand trust, word-of-mouth communication, and brand commitment mediate the effects of consumer brand identification on brand loyalty. Finally, the proposed competing model implies that the indirect impact of brand personality and consumer brand identification is inevitable in building department stores’ brand loyalty.
Discussion, conclusion and implications
The success of integrating the concept of BP and CBI in marketing research and brand management has indeed led to calls for further studies. Specifically, studies on the concept of BP and CBI in the context of department store brand loyalty (CBL) are scarce. This research comprehensively reviewed studies concerning CBL within the context of the retail industry. In addition, since several studies have merely considered the role of CBI in creating customer brand loyalty in different contexts, such as the hotel industry (Tuškej et al., 2013) and the car industry (Kuenzel & Halliday, 2008), this research modified those models, which have overlooked the inevitable factors (i.e., BP being a concept for enhancing CBI level), and developed a comprehensive research framework which can be applied for further studies. The finding of the current study shows that BP indirectly affects CBL via consumer brand identification; at the same time, CBI also has a strong indirect effect on CBL through a customer’s judgment of PSQ, PV, BT, BCOMM, and positive WOMC. The findings suggest that brand can be strongly identified if the personality of the brand is more congruent with the customer. Accordingly, strong CBI contributes to favorable positive judgment about brand service excellence (service quality), overall evaluation of utility (PV), higher level of inclination to rely on that brand (i.e., BT and BCOMM), and finally, recommending the department store’s brand to others (i.e., positive WOMC). Consequently, this positive outcome will definitely determine the level of CBL.
