Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal

Reto Felix

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Reto Felix , (2014),"Multi-brand loyalty: when one brand is not enough", Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 17 Iss 4 pp. 464 - 480

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Multi-brand loyalty: when one

brand is not enough

Reto Felix

Department of Marketing, The University of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg, Texas, USA

Abstract

Purpose– The purpose of this research is to provide a deeper, constructivist account of multi-brand loyalty. Previous literature has acknowledged the existence of multi-brand loyalty, but described it from a narrow, rational and primarily utilitarian point of view.

Design/methodology/approach– The study is based on open-ended, depth interviews. Data were labeled, coded and classified into different topics, and thematic analysis was used to identify three dominant themes.

Findings– Multi-brand loyalty emerged in three forms: biased, specialized and perfect substitutes. These relationships may undergo dynamic transformations over time. Further, family tradition and perceived freedom were identified as two important motivations for consumers to be loyal to more than one brand. The managerial implications address suggestions on how companies can avoid that consumers become loyal to several brands instead of maintaining single-brand loyalty.

Originality/value– The study is the first to address multi-brand loyalty based on a qualitative research approach and provides preliminary insights into occurrences and motivations related to the construct.

Keywords Brand relationships, Anthropomorphization, Depth interviews, Multi-brand loyalty

Paper typeResearch paper

Introduction

Winning customer loyalty has been identified as being critical for a firm’s long-term survival (Agustin and Singh, 2005) and success (Dekimpeet al., 1997). Previous research suggests that it remains central to defend or capture market share (Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001;Kumar and Shah, 2004) and achieve long-run profitability (Gensleret al., 2007;Helgesen, 2006;Reichheld, 1996). Loyal consumers are usually less price sensitive than nonloyal consumers (Yoon and Tran, 2011) and in the event of a service failure, loyal customers have been found to be less likely to engage in negative word-of-mouth communication and to address their complaints directly to the firm (Ashley and Varki, 2009). Thus, having a loyal customer base is an important strategic goal for many, if not most, companies.

Although, from the point of view of the company, one-on-one loyalty relationships (that is, consumers are loyal to only the company’s own brand) are desirable, it appears that frequently consumers are loyal to more than just one brand. For example, it has been suggested that buying a multi-brand repertoire is the rule rather than the exception (Barnard and Ehrenberg, 1997;Dawes, 2008;Uncleset al., 2010), andSheth (1970, p. 348) argues that “obviously, a buyer is loyal not only to one brand but to many brands in the market, although he may have greater loyalty to one particular brand over others”. This specific manifestation of loyalty has been classified in literature as multi-brand loyalty

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1352-2752.htm

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Received 9 November 2012 Revised 4 May 2013 Accepted 22 October 2013

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal Vol. 17 No. 4, 2014 pp. 464-480

© Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1352-2752

DOI10.1108/QMR-11-2012-0053

(Jacoby, 1971;Jacoby and Kyner, 1973;Oliver, 1999;Olson and Jacoby, 1974), divided loyalty (Yim and Kannan, 1999), or polygamous loyalty (Dowling and Uncles, 1997).

However, despite the acknowledgement that consumers may be loyal to more than one brand, empirical literature on multi-brand loyalty is scarce and has been limited to experimental and modeling approaches. For example,Yim and Kannan (1999) show managerial and theoretical implications for hard core and divided loyalty segments, but do not explain meanings consumers assign to different manifestations of divided loyalty and their underlying motivations. While valuable for their ability to detect causal relationships and facilitate prediction, these quantitative methods are not suited to discover the deep meanings behind constructs that enrich contextual understanding and theory enhancement (Fournier and Yao, 1997). Thus, it is the objective of this study to provide a qualitative account of multi-brand loyalty based on a relationship perspective. To understand different occurrences of multi-brand loyalty in their natural settings, five informants from different stages in their life cycles were interviewed about an extensive portfolio of products and services. Data collection and analysis were based on a constructivist, grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006;Creswell, 2007). This method studies people in their natural environments and focuses on the specific context in which consumers live and work. Contrary to positivist approaches, the researcher is the key instrument in this process by generating interpretations of the meanings others have about the world (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005).

The article is structured as follows: first, the conceptual framework of brand loyalty in general and multi-brand loyalty in particular is derived from a review of previous literature. To facilitate the understanding of multi-brand loyalty, the metaphor of loyalty as an interpersonal relationship (Fournier, 1998;Fournier and Alvarez, 2012;

Fournier and Yao, 1997) is introduced and critically revised in this section. Next, research methodology and methods are described. Finally, the findings are reported based on a thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998;Braun and Clarke, 2006; Sayre, 2001), followed by a discussion of the results. Being the first study that explores multi-brand loyalty based on a qualitative research approach, it expands the current knowledge about brand loyalty by:

• presenting different types of multi-brand loyalty;

• discussing motivations for multi-brand loyalty, such as family tradition and perceived freedom;

• exploring multi-brand loyalty in a dynamic perspective; and

• introducing the marriage analogy (Fournier, 1998;Tynan, 1997) to multi-brand loyalty.

Conceptual framework

Brand loyalty.Current conceptualizations of brand loyalty are either based on loyalty as a behavioral construct or loyalty as a two-dimensional, behavior-plus-attitude measure. The behavioral conceptualization has been in use for at least 60 years and suggests that:

[…] brand loyalty is conceived to be simply biased choice behavior with respect to branded merchandise […] No consideration should be given to what the subject thinks or what goes on in his central nervous system; his behavior is the full statement of what brand loyalty is (Tucker, 1964, p. 32).

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It follows that the behavioral approach is not interested in the underlying motivations of brand repurchase (Cunningham, 1956) and focuses on observing rather than on understanding brand loyalty. Because the conceptualization of brand loyalty as a purely behavioral construct allows researchers to analyze real purchases (as opposed to self-reported data), behavioral measures of brand loyalty have been used successfully in recent research (Che and Seetharaman, 2009;Mittal and Kamakura, 2001;Uncleset al., 2010).

On the other hand, the two-dimensional behavior-plus-attitude measure is based on the argument that purchase behavior alone does not allow for a distinction between true and spurious loyalty (Day, 1969;Dick and Basu, 1994). For instance, when considering a 10-trial purchase sequence AAAAAAAAAA, the proponents of this approach argue that it is not clear if this behavior reflects true brand loyalty or if the consumer is rather driven by inertia (Odinet al., 2001). Inertia can be distinguished from true brand loyalty by an acceptable (as opposed to a high level) of satisfaction and by the absence of high levels of commitment and identification with the brand. It reflects a nonconscious process where consumers repeatedly purchase the same brand passively without much thought (Huang and Yu, 1999). To address this problem, it has been suggested to add an attitudinal or motivational component to the conceptualization of brand loyalty. For example, after removing buyers who had not an extremely or very favorable initial attitude toward the brand from a pool of frequent buyers of a specific brand,Day (1969)

reduced the number of truly loyal consumers in his study from 108 to 76. The integration of both behavioral and attitudinal aspects of brand loyalty is reflected inJacoby and Kyner’s (1973, p. 2) definition, who suggest that brand loyalty is:

(1) the biased (i.e. nonrandom), (2) behavioral response (i.e. purchase), (3) expressed over time, (4) by some decision-making unit, (5) with respect to one or more alternative brands out of a set of such brands, and (6) is a function of psychological (decision-making, evaluative) processes.

More recently,Oliver (1999, p. 34) has described brand loyalty as:

[…] a deeply held commitment to rebuy or repatronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same brand-set purchasing,despitesituational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behavior.

Whereas the attitudinal component of brand loyalty in Oliver’s definition is reflected in the deeply held commitment to rebuy or repatronize, the behavioral aspect is expressed in the condition that this commitment must cause actual purchases of the brand. Thus, a substantial stream of recent research (Brunneret al., 2008;Chandrashekaranet al., 2007;

Gounaris and Stathakopoulos, 2004;Homburg and Giering, 2001;Jamal and Anastasiadou, 2009) favors the behavior-plus-attitude conceptualization of brand loyalty.

Multi-brand loyalty

The literature on brand loyalty suggests that multi-brand loyalty is a frequent phenomenon and its inclusion in consumer research may have important benefits. For example, it has been demonstrated that by differentiating between single-brand and multi-brand loyalty, the heuristic classification validity of consumer purchasing models can be enhanced substantially (Banasiewicz, 2005). Barnard and Ehrenberg (1997)

acknowledge that multi-brand loyalty is an ever-present part of the context in which advertising operates and provide conceptually deduced recommendations on how to

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target multi-brand loyal consumers. However, not much is known about why and under what conditions multi-brand loyalty occurs (or what are the factors that impede multi-brand loyalty from occurring).Jacoby (1971)suggests that social judgment theory may play a role for multi-brand loyalty to occur, and starts his argument with the observation that individuals tend to organize the brands for a given product category into one of the three regions of acceptance, rejection or neutrality. Multi-brand loyalty occurs for brands that are in the acceptance region, especially if the differences in perception among the brand in the acceptance region are small. Low levels of differentiation among brands, combined with more choices and lower risks in brand switching, thus may contribute to higher occurrences of multi-brand loyalty (Bennett and Rundle-Thiele, 2005). Further, it has been suggested that multi-brand loyalty is an effect of consumers buying different brands for different occasions or for vanity (Dowling and Uncles, 1997). Unfortunately, these motivations for multi-brand loyalty have not been demonstrated empirically. Further, previous research has not attempted to explore the deep meanings and motivations related to multi-brand loyalty in a natural setting. Thus, it is the objective of this study to provide a comprehensive account of multi-brand loyalty based on a relationship perspective. The foundations of the relationship approach in loyalty research are outlined in the next section.

From behavioral and attitudinal loyalty to the brand relationship perspective

Because simple behavior and attitude measures are hardly capable of capturing the full emotive and hedonic scope of what constitutes the complex concept of loyalty (Fournier and Yao, 1997), it has been suggested that consumer– brand interactions can be understood more thoroughly from a relationship perspective (Aggarwal, 2004;Fournier, 1998). Relationship theory in brand research is based on the premise that the brand is an active, interdependent partner that is able to initiate and negotiate exchange processes, rather than a passive, akinetic object. To fulfill this role, brands are converted into living entities with quasi-human souls and personality traits. This tendency to anthropomorphize (that is, to imbue the real or imagined behavior of nonhuman agents with human-like characteristics, motivations, intentions or emotions;Epleyet al., 2007) is common in modern consumer culture (Fournier and Alvarez, 2012;Levy, 1985). The willingness of consumers to assign human-like qualities to inanimate objects such as brands can be explained with the need to facilitate interactions with the nonmaterial world (Fournier, 1998) and should be highest when brand image and consumers’ self-concept are congruent (Puzakova et al., 2009). Thus, it is not surprising that consumer researchers have enthusiastically accepted the challenge of endowing brands with personality and exploring the dimensions of brand personality (Aaker, 1997;Malär

et al., 2011; Plummer, 1985; Swaminathan et al., 2009). The brand relationship perspective extends the idea of brand personality: whereas brand personality describes a brand with human-like personality traits such as friendly, conservative or authentic, brand relationships include qualified statements about how brand interacts with consumers, such as “she [the brand] intimidates me” or “she understands how I am” (Blackston, 1992).

The relationship perspective in brand research implies an analogy or, more specifically, a metaphor, between person-to-person interactions and brand–person relationships (Felix, 2009;Tynan, 1997). Some authors have been cautious in assigning complex emotional relationships to brands. For example, based onSternberg’s (1986)

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triangle metaphor of love,Shimp and Madden (1988)replace intimacy with liking and passion with yearning (whereas commitment is applied to both person-to-person and person– brand relationships), andYimet al.(2008)substitute person-to-person love with customer–firm affection. On the other hand, a substantial number of authors promote the use of complex interpersonal relationships in consumer– brand interactions, such as love (Albertet al., 2008;Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006;Roberts, 2005), flings (Fournier and Alvarez, 2012) and engagement (Hollebeek, 2011).

However, it is important to note that the relationship perspective in marketing should be used metaphorically rather than literally (O’Malleyet al., 2008;O’Malley and Tynan, 1999). The objective of a metaphor is to transfer meaning between two concepts through associations to facilitate the understanding of a complex or unfamiliar construct (Davies and Chun, 2003). Thus, using the relationship metaphor in marketing does not imply that consumers literally experience relationships they have with brands in an identical way as they do in interpersonal relationships. After all, it would be strange to claim that someone loves a brand the same way someone loves a person (Papista and Dimitriadis, 2012). Rather, the relationship metaphor suggests that some aspects of interpersonal relationships may be transferred to person-brand relationships (Hunt and Menon, 1995) because the same norms that shape conventional person-to-person relationships also inform consumer– brand interactions (Aggarwal and Law, 2005).

Methodology

The research approach of this study is based on a qualitative, interpretative perspective which focuses on understanding the meanings people assign to their behaviors and actions (Marshall and Rossman, 2006). Qualitative research studies consumers in their natural settings and attempts to make sense of phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005). It uses typically relatively small samples or even single cases (n⫽ 1) to generate information-rich cases for study in depth (Patton, 1990) and enables the researcher to obtain details and insights about emotions and cognitive processes that are difficult or impossible to discover through conventional quantitative research methods (Strauss and Corbin, 1998).

Five informants (compareTable I) from two cities in the northern part of Mexico were purposively selected (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) by snowballing personal contacts (Peñaloza and Barnhart, 2011). Commensurate with the qualitative research approach, the sampling strategy was not focused on statistical generalizability, but on the question if the findings from the study could be meaningfully transferred to other contexts (Marshall and Rossman, 2006). Only informants who had a major share of the decision-making in their household were recruited for the study. Further, another

Table I.

Informants’ characteristics

Informant Age (years) Gender Occupation Household status

Alicia 31 Female Government worker Married

Barbara 25 Female Sales executive Single

Claudia 23 Female Accountant Married

Daniela 53 Female Insurance agent Divorced with grown children

Eric 39 Male Medical doctor Single

Note: Informants’ names have been changed for privacy reasons

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requirement for consumers to be included in the study was to have access to and experience with a significant number of branded goods and services. Based on the assumption that the bottom of the pyramid in Mexico does not have access to branded goods to the same extent as more affluent consumers, only informants from the middle or higher-middle class were selected. Because women frequently exhibit more and stronger interpersonal relationships and brand involvements (Fournier, 1998), four of the informants were female and the results were contrasted with one male consumer. Two informants (25-year-old Barbara and 39-year-old Eric) were single, two (31-year-old Alicia and 23-year-old Claudia) were married and one (53-year-old Daniela) was divorced with two kids.

Data were obtained by applying open-ended, depth interviews (Fontana and Frey, 1998) which produced free-form, consumer-driven text (Stern et al., 1998). The interviews, one per informant, lasted between 90 and 150 minutes and resulted in 135 pages of double-spaced, verbatim transcripts. All interviews were conducted at the informant’s home in a relaxed atmosphere. Informants determined the pace of the interviews and were encouraged to share any anecdote or story they had in mind. Following recommendations from Thompson et al. (1989), “why” questions in the interviews were avoided because they tend to motivate respondents to find rationally consistent and plausible explanations for their behaviors. Rather, informants were encouraged to share how, when and in which context they used the brands in their homes, thus maintaining the task of interpreting why people use their brands the way they do with the researcher, instead of imposing the burden of interpretation on the informants.

Because informal conversations with consumers before selecting informants for this study suggested that real multi-brand loyalty (where consumers not only buy two or more brands within the same product category, but also are highly committed to these brands) may be less common than suggested in previous, behavioral-oriented literature (Barnard and Ehrenberg, 1997;Sheth, 1970; Uncles

et al., 2010), a broad range of consumer products and services such as food,

health-care products, clothing, electronics, luggage, cars, restaurants and banking was included in the interview guide. Although the interviews focused on multi-brand loyalty relationships, learning about a broad range of each informant’s brand relationships helped with interpreting multi-brand loyalty in the informant’s overall consumption context.

In the data analysis phase, careful transcription of the interviews was used as a strategy to enhance descriptive validity (Maxwell, 2002). The analysis of verbatim transcripts was complemented with visual (photograph) information about products and brands and observations at the informant’s home. All resulting person–product or person– brand relationships (for example, Claudia and Pantene or Eric and Stolichnaya) were documented, and data were labeled, coded and classified into different topics or themes (Charmaz, 2006). Thus, thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998;Braun and Clarke, 2006;Sayre, 2001) was used to identify and report themes derived from the data. The overall analysis followed the iterative process of hermeneutical interpretation described inLuedickeet al. (2010). Constructing meaningful links between different behaviors (troping) facilitated the generation of layers of meaning comprising an interpretation (Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994).

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Findings

Without claiming to represent a comprehensive account of multi-brand relationships, the five cases in the study cover a wide range of social circumstances. Two of the female informants, Claudia and Alicia, are married without kids, but comprise somewhat different age brackets (23 and 31 years, respectively). Both cases portray transitions from family tradition (the brand my mother/father bought) towards independence and autonomy. One female participant (Barbara aged 25 years) is single and lives with her mother. Indeed, Barbara’s account of brand relationships has to be interpreted in the specific Mexican context, where, opposed to many Western cultures, cultural concepts such as the incompletely launched young adult are alien to both parents and daughters, and it is perceived as perfectly normal that children live in their parents’ house until they get married. Being at a more advanced life stage, Daniela, aged 53 years, is a divorced working mother of two grown-up daughters who exemplifies the constant negotiation between the demands of work organization, motherhood and femininity described inThompson (1996). Finally, Eric is a 39-year-old single medical doctor who tends to put his cognitive brand evaluations and his emotional brand affections in the context of the broader economic, legal or political environment. Despite differences in their social conditions, the five informants share a living standard comparable to high-income countries and form part of the (prototypical) segment of the “elite” (Burgess and Steenkamp, 2006). Thus, they are probably more similar to consumers in developed Western economies than to the large majority of the poor in their home country.

From the thematic analysis, three leitmotifs emerged that are interpreted in the specific context of the informants’ life stories. A first theme relates to the different prototypes of multi-brand loyalty. The second theme discusses some of the motivations for multi-brand loyalty, and the third theme presents multi-brand loyalty in a dynamic perspective.

Prototypes of multi-brand loyalty

A classification of different prototypes of multi-brand loyalty is obtained by applying the relationship metaphor of polygamous marriage to the informants’ brand relationships. Although relationships, and marriages in particular, are supposed to be monogamous in most Western cultures, polygamous marriages (that is, any form of marriage where a person has more than one spouse) can be observed in the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Asia and some subcultures of Europe and North America (Al-Krenawi et al., 2006). To avoid hypermasculine connotations, the following interpretations of multi-brand loyalty (Table II) are based on the polyandrous perspective (one wife married to several husbands) rather than polygyny (one husband married to two or more wives).

A first type of polygamous loyalty is represented by a wife who shows high commitment with all her husbands, but one of her husbands is her favorite. This kind of biased loyalty is found, for example, in Barbara’s purchases of Verde Valle and San José rice. Both brands are strong contenders in her loyalty set; however, Barbara likes Verde Valle more and buys San José because it is less expensive. Due to the trade-off in perceived quality and price, she switches regularly between her two favorite brands:

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Barbara: When it comes to rice, I buy Verde Valle or San José, these are the two I usually buy. It depends on the discounts but these are the two I prefer.

Researcher: Let’s suppose the two brands have the same price, which one would you choose first?

Barbara: Verde Valle.

Researcher: So this is the one you usually buy?

Barbara: It depends, I think my second choice would be San José because of the price.

On the other hand, a wife in a polyandrous marriage might prefer a specific husband according to specific occasions. For example, she might choose her first husband to accompany her to important business events and her second husband to be with her in more informal situations. Transferred to brand relationships, this type of specialized multi-brand loyalty implies that the two alternatives in each category are clearly differentiated from each other and fulfill slightly different underlying needs. Specialized loyalty revealed itself, for example, with Barbara’s use of Lubriderm and Nivea skin cream:

Researcher: Do you use any skin creams or lotions?

Barbara: I use Libriderm or Nivea. I don’t use any lotions.

Researcher: And in which occasions do you use Libriderm, and in which occasions do you buy Nivea?

Table II.

Prototypes of multi-brand loyalty

Prototype Description Case example

Biased A differential in preference within

the loyalty set leads to a stronger repurchase of one brand over the other(s). However, all brands in the loyalty set are attractive alternatives and recommended to friends or family

Alicia and her preference of Quik over Choco Milk within her loyalty set. Barbara’s preference for Valle Verde over San Jose in her loyalty set of rice

Specialized Two (or more) alternatives within

the product category are differentiated and fulfill slightly different needs

Claudia’s use of Pantene for normal applications and TRESemmé when her hair is worn out or abused by dyeing and discoloration. Eric’s craving for Carl’s Jr. when he wants a specialty hamburger, such as the six dollar or the guacamole burger, and his preference for Burger King when he is just looking for a regular burger Perfect

substitutes

Two (or more) alternatives within the product category are, although highly attractive, not or very little differentiated and are used as perfect substitutes

Daniela’s strong preference for Chevrolet and Ford, which both represent the American myth of toughness and durability. Eric and his mixing of Adidas and Nike (“but everything get’s made in China, anyway”)

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Barbara: I buy both but when it is cold outside, I find Nivea to be more adequate.

Because it gets cold in northern Mexico only a few weeks a year, Nivea is perceived as a product for special occasions. In the same vein, when it comes to shampoo, Claudia is attached to both Pantene and TRESemmé. She uses Pantene for normal applications and TRESemmé, which she describes as a more professional shampoo, when her hair is worn out or abused by dyeing and discoloration.

Researcher: What about shampoo and conditioner?

Claudia: For shampoo and conditioner we buy Pantene a lot.

Researcher: Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Claudia: Well, look, I buy Pantene because it restores my hair and at the same time it helps to avoid hair loss. So my hair is very long and I like very much how this shampoo leaves my hair, and in this respect my husband has no objection.

Researcher: Have you tried any other brand, besides Pantene?

Claudia: Yes, I have tried other brands, such as TRESemmé, and this is a more professional shampoo.

Researcher: And this has also worked for you?

Claudia: Yes, but not now. I buy this brand when my hair is very worn out, but because currently I have not abused it that much with hair coloring and discoloration. Right now I buy Pantene.

Finally, a wife may be completely indifferent between her husbands, which is represented by the metaphor of perfect substitutes in multi-brand loyalty. This metaphor is found in Daniela’s strong preference for both Chevrolet and Ford. It is also apparent in Eric’s account of Adidas and Nike, who has a strong attachment with both brands but does not see them as differentiated in any significant way. Eric thus explains that he mixes the two brands randomly:

Eric: I guess, really, the only thing that I can think of would be like, you know, Adidas is European and Nike American […] but everything gets made in China, anyway […] I do it [mixing the brands] all the time. Like my T-shirt is Adidas and my jacket is Nike. I am not mixing it on purpose.

Motivations for multi-brand loyalty: Tangible product benefits, family tradition, and perceived freedom

When talking about their brand relationships, the informants in this study showed a tendency to explain their preferences and purchase decisions with logic and rational arguments, such as better taste, superior design, better quality or lower prices. These tangible product attributes were mentioned frequently in both single- and multi-brand loyalty relationships. For example, Alicia relates her well-defined preference for Lala (milk), Chen (cheese), Herdez (tuna fish) or Boons and Sunset (alcoholic beverages) with the superior taste and quality of these food products. However, a more thorough interpretation suggests that multi-brand loyalty is triggered also by complex psychological and sociological processes. Among these factors, family tradition and perceived freedom emerged as dominant themes in this study.

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Family tradition may explain both single- and multi-brand loyalty. For Claudia’s young marriage, the single-brand loyalty to the Sony brand is strongly influenced by her parents and also carries some symbolic meaning because the first of the three Sony televisions in her home was a wedding gift from her father. For Alicia, the influence of family tradition translates into a preference for Samsung and LG in the air conditioner category because “these are the brands that were bought in my mother’s home, so you know these are good brands.” For Daniela, whose purchase of a Nissan X-Trail resulted in regret because she was tempted by the “novel and the economic”, Chevrolet and Ford had always been in her home and are the brands her dad always bought:

Daniela: Look, I bought the Nissan X-Trail because it was novel and everybody went to buy one, and that made me lean towards the novel and the economic, because as I said, because of my job I am always on the road. So I needed an economic SUV and I bought the X-Trail. But I didn’t feel very safe in this car and there have always been these brands, Chevrolet and Ford, in my home and my dad always bought one of those.

Interestingly, as these accounts of family tradition in multi-brand loyalty suggest, brand loyalty was not so much driven by nostalgia or a longing to restore the conditions from childhood, but rather by a carry-over effect on the brand’s trustworthiness from family members.

Finally, an important motivation for consumers to be multi-brand loyal is the desire to maintain behavioral freedom while reducing the negative emotional effects of choice overload. Differently than the traditional consideration set, which is inherently instable and formed for a particular purchase occasion (Chakravarti and Janiszewski, 2003;

Kardeset al., 1993), the multi-brand loyalty set includes brands characterized by high levels of commitment and identification and thus is relatively stable over time. Daniela’s brand loyalty for Chevrolet and Ford (a relationship that only had been broken temporarily) and Eric’s long-lasting preference for both Adidas and Nike are examples for these loyalty sets. By being loyal to two brands, Daniela and Eric eliminate the burden of a complex decision-making process, but still enjoy the emotional benefit of being able to make a choice.

Multi-brand loyalty in a dynamic perspective

Although multi-brand loyalty relationships are relatively stable over time, they are, as any relationship, characterized by temporality and may experience transformations such as evolution and disintegration. From the analysis, two patterns of dynamic transformations of multi-brand loyalty emerge, which are exemplified by Alicia’s explanations (Table III). Alicia’s brand relationship in the alcoholic beverages category are evolving towards multi-brand loyalty by adding a second brand, Sunset, to accompany her once single-favorite brand, Boons. Adding a second brand to the loyalty set augments the available choice options and thus increases perceived freedom for Alicia. On the other hand, multi-brand loyalty may also be transient, as in the case of Alicia’s former loyalty to Samsung and LG:

Alicia: Look, let me give you an example: We always bought Sony or Panasonic because these are the good ones. But the TV we have now, we bought it because of a promotion [discount] […] Before, we were a lot like if it’s not a brand name, then no, because it will break down more rapidly […] But this TV has been excellent. It’s not that for being a no-name brand it won’t work. In the beginning we saw it like a risk, but now that we have it for two years, excellent. And a Sony we have has broken down!

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Discussion and implications for marketers

The results from this research suggest that multi-brand loyalty in consumer markets exists, but it seems to be less common than claimed in previous literature (e.g.Sheth, 1970; Uncles et al., 2010). Though not necessarily representative for the overall population, multi-brand loyalty occurred in about 1 of 10 brand relationships documented in this study. However, multi-brand loyalty is important because, from a managerial point of view, it can be looked at as a lost opportunity or as an undesired state of consumer loyalty. That is, although consumers apparently can show relatively high levels of commitment and emotional attachment to more than one brand within the same product category, from a marketer’s perspective, it is preferable to have a customer base that is loyal only to the company’s own brand.

To avoid multi-brand loyalty, marketers will need different approaches for the three prototypes of multi-brand loyalty identified in this study. First, perfect substitutes seem to be a problem of inadequate product differentiation (Bennett and Rundle-Thiele, 2005). Because consumers who have perfect substitutes in their loyalty set are those who are probably the most liberal and progressive individuals, morality-based appeals addressing family tradition and conservative values will possibly backfire for them. One possibility of addressing the problem of lacking product differentiation consists in either developing unique product benefits or a distinctive brand personality. Although consumers may find it difficult to assign unique, differentiated personalities to brands the same way they perceive personalities in persons (Dawes, 2012; Romaniuket al., 2007), the approach of differentiating brands by using brand personality has been widely supported in marketing practice and theory (Aaker, 1997; Maläret al., 2011;

Swaminathanet al., 2009).

Second, specialized multi-brand loyalty occurs when consumers connect with a brand for one specific occasion, but do not find the brand useful or adequate for another occasion. For example, consumers may accept regular products for general use, but prefer more professional products in specific situations, such as in Claudia’s preference of Unilever’s TRESemmé shampoo over Procter & Gamble’s Pantene when her hair is worn out. Marketers may try to extend their product lines by offering specialized products that cover these specific consumer needs. Although the additional sales from

Table III.

Dynamic perspectives of multi-brand loyalty

Form of multi-brand

loyalty Description Case example

Evolving Previous single brand loyalty

transforms into multi-brand loyalty by adding a second alternative

Alicia and the addition of Sunset to her loyalty set of flavored alcoholic beverages

Transient (fading) The preference for several brands

(instead of the preference for a single brand) disintegrates. Brand promises of established brands are questioned and scrutinized. Former paradigms of brand choice, often based on family tradition, are challenged

Alicia and her former loyalty set of Samsung and LG, which is fading away in favor of no-name consumer electronics products

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these specialized products may be limited, from a strategic point of view it may serve the interests of the company by preventing that consumers get into contact with competitors’ brands. Third, in the case of biased multi-brand loyalty, persuasive advertising and sales promotions may be a key to gaining a larger share of consumers’ preference. However, product availability at the point of purchase is also very important because as opposed to single-brand loyalty, consumers will not go to the next store to buy their target brand, but rather switch to the second-best option in their loyalty set. Finally, a high level of alert is advised in the specific cultural context of emerging economies, as evidenced in this study. More specifically, consumption patterns in these markets may change as soon as additional brands become available. These threats may derive from established western consumer brands entering the market, new “no-name” brands (frequently from Asia) that compete on price and private label brands from trusted domestic and international supermarket chains.

Limitations and future research

Although this research was conducted in the cultural and economic context of Mexico, a less individualistic country with substantially lower incomes in comparison to the USA and most countries in central and northern Europe, the informants in this study are from an urban, increasingly important middle-upper class of Mexican consumers who have become inculcated with a modern, consumption-centered lifestyle. Familiarity with domestic and established international brands form a natural part of their life, and similar to major Western and Asian consumer societies, brand relationships serve for identity construction and cultural identification. Thus, caution is advised when trying to generalize the findings of this study to the lower classes or the bottom of the pyramid in emerging economies. Future research may strive to extend the findings of this study to different market segments, such as consumers from Western cultures or consumers from the bottom of the pyramid.

The data in this study reveal different types of and motivations for multi-brand loyalty, but they do not explicitly address previously observed extra-marital or temporary brand relationships such as affairs (Fournier, 1998) and flings (Fournier and Alvarez, 2012), or disruptive changes in brand relationships such as divorces. Future research may investigate the meaning and symbolism of affairs, flings and divorces in person– brand relationships when seen from a multi-brand loyalty perspective.

An interesting avenue for future research may be an exploration of the role of social and moral norms in multi-brand loyalty. Although loyalty provides important functional benefits (for example, in a person– brand relationship, loyalty is a shortcut in decision-making, allowing consumers to reduce substantially the cognitive resources assigned to information search and alternative evaluation and to avoid negative emotions stemming from decision conflict), loyalty also involves an important moral dimension, and it has been claimed that “the idea of loyalty is at the heart of commonsense morality” (Pettit, 1988, p. 163). In social relationships, it is usually expected to restrict one’s loyalty to one exclusive relationship. For example, monogamous loyalty is expected from intimate relationships (Fletcheret al., 1999), from the relationship with God in religions such as Christianity and Islam, from the patriotic relationship with one’s country, and from one’s employer. If, as suggested byAggarwal and Law (2005), many person– brand relationships are based on the same norms as

475

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loyalty

conventional person-to-person relationships, multi-brand loyalty could potentially generate consumer emotions such as guilt or shame.

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About the author

Reto Felix is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Texas-Pan American and holds a Ph.D. from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. His research focuses on consumer behavior, marketing research, and measurement issues. He has published in journals such as the Journal of International Marketing, Psychology & Marketing and the Journal of Consumer Marketing. Further, he has presented his research at conferences hosted by the Association for Consumer Research, the American Marketing Association, the Academy of Marketing Science and the Society for Marketing Advances. Reto Felix can be contacted at:felixr@utpa.edu

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