مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد اثرات وابستگی ساختاری و پیوند مبتنی بر وفاداری برند – امرالد 2017

Brand loyalty is one of the marketing concepts that have received much attention from researchers in the marketing discipline. The determinants of brand loyalty have been well studied (Gursoy Chen and Chi, 2014), and it will continue to be a topic of interest for many researchers due to its strategic importance to firms. Factors such as physical quality, passion, connection, affection and brand trust have been associated with brand loyalty (Menidjel et al., 2017; Hemsley-Brown and Alnawas, 2016). These results imply that the attachment theory can explain customers’ loyalty to a brand since these elements are central to attachment theory (Bowlby, 1988; Ainsworth, 1973). Attachment theory has been applied in many fields of academic research. For example, in the marketing literature, attachment is normally defined through affection (Hemsley-Brown and Alnawas, 2016). In addition, emotional connections have been associated with brand choice (Narteh et al., 2012). However, as shown in the humanistic geography literature, attachment is a multi-faceted concept which goes beyond bonding; it involves bonding, process, people and structures associated with a place (Scannell and Gifford, 2010). In line with this extant literature, we posit that attachment can be viewed from two perspectives; structural and bonding. We also argue that there is a relationship between attachment and brand loyalty. Providing an empirical support for our arguments, we used data sets from the mobile telecommunication sector in Ghana. This study is timely since the introduction of the mobile number portability (MNP) policy by National Communication Authority of Ghana has provided opportunities for customers of mobile telecommunication brands to easily switch from one service provider to another. Again, the telecommunication sector is one of the fastest growing economic sectors in Ghana and the sector is very competitive. Thus, there is the need for the telecommunication companies to find new ways of creating a customer base that is loyal to their brands. The main aim of this study is to ascertain the relationship between attachment and brand loyalty. Our study contributes to the extant literature as it offers an alternative and additional dimension of attachment as theorized in the marketing literature. The study also offers suggestions as to how brand managers can develop attachment-based marketing strategies to create a customer-base that is loyal to their brands. The rest of the paper is divided as follows: theoretical background; research model and hypotheses development; methodology; results and analysis; discussions of findings; theoretical contributions; and practical contributions, and limitations of the study.