The Study Of Mechanism Of Brand Loyalty's Formation And Development Under The Pattern Of Complex Buying Behavior

With the development of global competition and internationalization, the famous international brands have brought enormous pressures on our native brands. Chinese economy has transformed from product competition era into brand competition era. Faced with more and more fierce competition, cultivating and maintaining brand loyalty is very important for native brands, not only for promoting competition ability, but also as a fundamental strategy to deal with the international challenges. Therefore, enterprises have to pay great attentions to development rules of brand loyalty in order to meet the requirements of existence and development.Brand loyalty always shows different styles under diverse patterns of buying behaviors, which leads to the need to research on the classification of brand development rules. Therefore, the dissertation studies the mechanism of cultivating and developing of brand loyalty under the patterns of complex buying behaviors. And also tries to explore the essence of brand loyalty and rules of cultivating and maintaining brand loyalty in the context of complex buying behaviors. The academic foundation stone and action guidelines are provided for marketing innovation as a result.Based on the comprehensive literature review, a new research framework is developed which aimed at exploring the mechanism of formation and development of brand loyalty under the patterns of complex buying behaviors. Quantitative tools are applied in the research such as structural equation model (SEM), SEM with curvilinear effects and interaction effects across latent variables. It is the main idea of the dissertation that the brand loyalty under the patterns of complex buying behaviors is driven by attitude in essence. That is to say, there are very intimate relationships between brand and customers as well including basic transactional relationship as more deeply over-transactional relationship. It is the transactional relationship that plays a foundational role, and it is over-transactional relationship that plays a catalytic role for maintaining the relationships. The main ideas above mentioned are going to be argumented layer by layer.The main research contents are as following.(a)Based on the reviews of relative literatures in the area of brand loyalty, the dissertation illuminates the relationships between diverse buying behavioral patterns and diverse loyal forms, and discloses the essences of brand loyalty in the context of complex buying behaviors.(b)Through the understanding of academic researches by former researchers, we describe the driving mechanism of brand loyalty under the patterns of complex buying behaviors from the view points of two layers----linear and nonlinear driving factors. The research comprehensively analyzes the important driving factors of brand loyalty and their influencing paths on brand loyalty by which shows the forming mechanisms of brand loyalty. Furthermore, several of the important factors are studied specially about their nonlinear driving effects on loyalty brands from the view points of dual-factor theory. The research results in this part not only enrich and deepen our understanding of the brand loyal phenomena but also provide a new perspective of brand management, which establishes the logic foundation of the whole research.(c)Integrating agency theory and relationship marketing theory, we describe the developing process of brand loyalty from which essential driving factors are extracted and a basis driving model of brand loyalty is established under the patterns of complex buying behaviors. The structural equation model is set up to explore the influencing relationships of perceived brand value, cumulative brand satisfaction, brand trust and brand commitment on brand loyalty. The survey study is applied to explore the essential reasons of brand loyalty under the pattern of complex buying behavior by the samples of mobile telephone users characterized with high-involving product and high-perceived brands'difference. It is showed that all of the four variables have significant effects on driving brand loyalty.(d) Based on need-gratification and dual-factor theories, we distinguish the driving factors into hygienic factors and motivative factors and build nonlinear driving model to probe into these antecedents'role respectively as hygienic factors and motivative factors. This study conceptualizes transaction-special brand satisfaction as a'hygiene factor'and brand trust as a'motivator factor', examines the differential nonlinear effects in brand loyalty mechanisms. We develop a structure equation model to explore the complex quadratic and interactive relationships of transaction-special brand satisfaction, brand trust and brand loyalty by surveying mobile telephone consumer. The results support the hygiene role of brand satisfaction, but the motivate role of brand trust only be found very weakly.The main heuristic conclusions of this dissertation are as follows:(a) The essences of brand loyalty under the pattern of complex buying behavior show a form of intimate relationships beween brand and consumers, so the corporate should pay more attention to cultivate and develop this relationships.(b) There are several driving factors of brand loyalty such as perceived brand value, brand satisfaction, brand trust and brand commitment which are all proved to be important antecendents of brand loyalty. So the corporate should map out a comprehensive strategy to carry on.(c) Hygienic factors and motivative factors should be distinguished among driving factors of brand loyalty. It should be first-line assured to attain some adequate levels for hygienic factors which are the foundational factors of brand loyalty, and it should be stressly enhanced for motivative factors which are the dynamical factors of brand loyalty and important for corporate to obtain competitive advantage.(d) Transaction-special brand satisfaction is the main hygienic factor of brand loyalty under the pattern of complex buying behavior.(e) Brand trust is the mian motivative factor of brand loyalty under the pattern of complex buying behavior. There are probably some slight innovations of this article embodies as follows:(a) Innovation from the theoretical angle——the discussions of mechanism of brand loyalty's formation and development under the pattern of complex buying behavior based on economics,marketing and managemet.The study regards the relationship of customers and brands as the relationship of principals and agents firstly, and points out that moral hazard and adverse selection problem are two obstacles in need of overcoming in order to maintain customer loyalty. But the strategies supplied by economics may not be enough to link customer and brand tightly for a long time. So, some effective variables of relationship marketing should be intergrated into these processes to solve these problems. Futhermore, the key factors extracted from above-mentioned processes can be divided into hygienic factors and motivative factors based on management theories and play differential effects to brand loyalty. The theoretical discussions will provide some reference value for comprehending this question deeply.(b) Innovation from the model angle——building and proving about linear and nonlinear model of brand loyalty under the pattern of complex buying behavior. Theories of brand loyalty are studied deeply from linear and nonlinear layers step by step innovatively to illuminate the mechanism of brand loyalty under the pattern of complex buying behavior.The simple antecedents model and the nonlinear antecedents model of brand loyalty are both builded and verifed to explain the brand loyalty more comprehensively and deeply which can make up the current researches to some degree.(c) Innovation from the method applied angle——application of new technology developed in the field of SEM to brand loyalty.The foregone researches in the customer loyalty focus mainly on simplely linear influencing effects, but the dissertation applies innovatively new technology developed in the field of SEM which can effectively deal with the curvilinear effects and interaction effects across latent variables to the research of brand loyalty. It not only realizes successfully the application of new technology, but also enrichs the studies of mechanism of cultivating and developing brand loyalty.