A Dual-dimension Model Of Customer Loyalty In High-grade Car Market

Customer loyalty theory is the product of market-oriented economy development. Since the 1970s, the research of customer loyalty has been gradually applied in many areas such as manufacturing, services sector and so on.With the continued rapid development of economy in China, high-grade car market has become a hotly contested spot to numerous world-class brand of high-grade car. Intensifying competition caused by product homogeneity has led to the change in the market strategy. Many high-grade car companies start to move their focus of marketing from a simple product competition to the relationship marketing strategy which is customer oriented. And by this way, companies intend to establish a good relation with customers, delivering excellent brand experience to cultivate customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Sequentially break the predicament of product homogeneity, and thus to seize more share of the market. As a durable good the customer of high-grade car not only put forward the high standard of requirement to product quality, but also hope the level of service which provided by companies could match their psychological expectation.So far, though there are many explorations on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in marketing theory research, the analysis of customer loyalty which combined the product subsystem and service subsystem is still in the initial stage. To carry out such research with the high-grade car brand as the object have been never seen before either theoretically or practically. Therefore, the analysis of the influence to customer loyalty from the product satisfaction and service satisfaction in the view of brand consumption system in the area of high-grade car market should have an significance to perfect theory in the marketing academia.On the basic of defining customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and the relationship between both of them, this paper makes ups the model that describe the influence to customer loyalty from product satisfaction and service satisfaction in the view of Mittal's brand consumption system. And using the data about satisfaction and loyalty of BMW owners, we test the theoretical model and hypothesis through correlation analysis and stepwise regression analysis. Finding of our study indicate that the product attribute includes manufacturing quality, vehicle performance, comfortableness, safety performance and economical performance. The customer's perception to service attribute includes tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The vehicle performance and the economical performance are the main attributes to influence customer product satisfaction; tangibles, reliability and empathy influence the service satisfaction significantly. In addition, there is a significant effect between product satisfaction and service satisfaction, and both of them produce significant impact to customer loyalty on one's own. The results of this study fill the blank of research about customer loyalty in high-grade car market in some extent. And play certain help role in company practical operation such resource allocation.