Brand loyalty is considered as a key factor for companies to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. Numerous studies have examined antecedents and consequences of brand loyalty (Dick and Basu 1994; Doney and Cannon, 1997; Sirdeshmukh, Singh, and Sabol 2002; Møller Jensen and Hansen 2006; Ferreira and Coelho 2015). Although marketing literature has recognized some other factors, such as the loyalty tendency, customer knowledge of the brand, the visible quality, and customer characteristics, to be influential on brand loyalty (Dick and Basu 1994; Chiou, Droge, and Hanvanich 2002; Johnson, Herrmann, and Huber 2006), researchers, in particular, have identified brand satisfaction and brand trust as the footstones for brand loyalty creation (Anderson and Sullivan 1993 Bolton and Lemon 1999; Garbarino and Johnson 1999; Jones and Suh 2000; Chaudhuri and Holbrook 2001; Lam et al. 2004; Agustin and Singh 2005; Veloutsou 2015). Furthermore, these variables’ positive, linear relationships with brand loyalty have been confirmed by the literature. Recently, researchers have discovered a curvilinear effect between satisfaction and loyalty. For example, some claim that there exists a “satisfactory trap,” referring to an irrelative customer loyalty area in which investments for improving satisfaction would result in little actual gaining (Reichheld, 1993; Finkelman 1993). Such a theory has been confirmed in both the consumer durable goods (Wang and Zhao 2003) and the service domains (Agustin and Singh 2005). Meanwhile, the nonlinear relationship between brand trust and brand loyalty has also gained attentions of marketing scholars. Agustin and Singh (2005) find the nonlinear effects of transaction-specific satisfaction, trust, and value on customer loyalty intentions, described as “an inclination to perform a diverse set of behaviors that signal a motivation to enhance an ongoing relationship with the service provider, including repeat buying and greater share of wallet.” Delgado-Ballester and Munuera-Alem
an (2001) suggest that in situations of high involvement, the effect of brand trust on generating customers’ commitment is stronger than that of the overall satisfaction. In this study, we aim at obtaining a more comprehensive understanding on the formation and development of brand loyalty by further exploring the mechanism of influence of brand satisfaction and brand trust. More specifically, drawing on Herzberg’s Dual-factor Theory of Job Satisfaction, we integrate brand satisfaction, brand trust, and brand loyalty into a single theoretical framework and propose a series of research expectations regarding the complex relationships among these constructs.