Resumo

BISSCHOFF, Christo  e  FLINT, Dorothy. Factors determining brand loyalty in a pandemic business environment. Tydskr. geesteswet. [online]. 2023, vol.63, n.2, pp.364-382. ISSN 2224-7912.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2023/v63n2a11.

Customer loyalty has significantly evolved over the last decade, specifically with social media platforms. Marketers engage customers regularly with an omnichannel approach, which allows brands to interact with their customers, whether person-to-person or person-to-community. Customer loyalty is characterised in the literature as a psychological process whereby a customer's loyalty attaches towards a specific service or brand. Over time, customer loyalty contributes to consumers'behaviour and preference for a specific brand or service. Therefore, a company should consider formulating or developing an appropriate business intelligence strategy to drive customers towards loyalty and increase their engagement with its brand. Furthermore, psychological shopper behaviour might expand and improve current research towards a customer perspective by distinguishing how customers are incentivised during their brand activity ventures, suggesting that customer loyalty and customers' judgements of businesses have a notable positive impact. As such, brands should identify what their businesses centre their attention on or what their attraction is. For a brand to understand and identify the best loyalty strategies for its target customers, the business must use the opportunity to enable the brand to develop new innovative approaches. These approaches continuously drive brand loyalty through sales by creating a competitive advantage in the market. Customer loyalty has become more than just a strategy for business or marketing. It empowers the consumer to be engaged throughout their initial interaction and purchase journey and become loyal to the brand. This engagement journey can help a brand to establish and grow due to the continuous support from consumers. The general aim of this study was to determine the nature of the relationship between customer engagement factors and brand loyalty. The study identified five customer engagement factors from the literature (brand reputation, social media, word-of-mouth, customer experience, and merchandising) with a view to investigating their role in brand loyalty. It is noteworthy that these factors are well-documented in a pre-Covid-19 environment; the question remains, however, whether these factors will still be valid and reliable in a Covid-19 business environment? This study aims to determine a response to precisely that question. In a quantitative research design a self-developed questionnaire was used to measure each one of these factors on a five-point Likert scale. All these factors and their respective measuring criteria were validated empirically using exploratory factor analysis. The social media platform Instagram was used to initiate a snowball sample, and a total of 135 social media participants responded by completing the online Google Forms questionnaire. The respondent profile shows that brands' social media page is the most preferred method of brand communication. This is followed by email, SMS and telephonic communication methods, with the latter being, in fact, clearly disliked. It was found that respondents prefer email, followed by SMS or the social media platform to receive brand communication; however, communication via telephone conversations is disliked. As consumers, respondents find brand advertisements memorable once they have seen them on different platforms or channels of communication. The most memorable channel is social media (having a recall rate of 62.2%). A total of 71.9% of participants first read the reviews of a new product that was launched. After that, they find a way through word-of-mouth or a brand community to make an informed discussion before purchasing the product and listening to what other consumers share on review platforms. The data are reliable (α>0.70) and the sample was deemed adequate (KMO>0.70). Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the relationships between customer engagement factors and brand loyalty. The results indicated that there are significant (p<.05) positive relationships for the factors brand reputation (r=.262; p<.05), social media (r=.430; p<.05), word-of-mouth (r=.309; p<.05), and visibility (r=.340; p<.05). The model explains a satisfactory cumulative variance of 65.1% (R²=0.651). The factor, customer experience, however, should be reconsidered because this antecedent did not significantly influence a consumer's loyalty to a brand. As such, exploratory factor analysis was used to determine whether there are other factors that determine brand loyalty. Eight factors were identified, explaining 63% of the variance cumulatively. These factors are visibility of merchandise, brand reputation, brand trust, brand references (outside the shop), advice (inside the shop), brand ambassador, the purchase experience, and personal choice. The eight new factors make more sense as factors to manage brand loyalty. Management should rather focus on these factors than concentrate on the initial five factors indicated in the literature. Possible areas for future research are to investigate the age and demographic areas with regard to how the participants could have viewed their opinions. A more centralised focus towards different ages, groups or generations such as Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and the Silent Generation can also be investigated to compare or illustrate which engagement strategy is most influential towards their brand loyalty.

Palavras-chave : customer loyalty; brand reputation; social media; word-of-mouth; brand community; customer experience; merchandising; brand loyalty.

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