Abstract
Over the past 20 years brand loyalty has been an important topic for both marketing practitioners and academics. While practitioners have produced proprietary brand loyalty audit models, there has been little academic research to make transparent the methodology that underpins these audits and to enable practitioners to understand, develop and conduct their own audits. In this article, we propose a framework for a brand loyalty audit that uses a tri-dimensional approach to brand loyalty, which includes behavioural loyalty and the two components of attitudinal loyalty: emotional and cognitive loyalty. In allowing for different levels and intensity of brand loyalty, this tri-dimensional approach is important from a managerial perspective. It means that loyalty strategies that arise from a brand audit can be made more effective by targeting the market segments that demonstrate the most appropriate combination of brand loyalty components. We propose a matrix with three dimensions (emotional, cognitive and behavioural loyalty) and two levels (high and low loyalty) to facilitate a brand loyalty audit. To demonstrate this matrix, we use the example of financial services, in particular a rewards-based credit card.
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The research in this paper was jointly funded by the Australian Research Council (Grant no. LP0455372) and Colmar Brunton Research.
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2(Associate Professor) is a marketing academic with the school of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations at Queensland University of Technology. She holds a PhD in brand loyalty and has published in international journals such as Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Brand Management, Journal of Product and Brand Management and Journal of Services Marketing. Rebekah has worked with organisations across a variety of service industries in Australia including Sensis, Brandaide, Australian Breastfeeding Association, Brisbane Lions, Queensland Health, Queensland Rail, Telstra and Westpac.
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Worthington, S., Russell-Bennett, R. & Härtel, C. A tri-dimensional approach for auditing brand loyalty. J Brand Manag 17, 243–253 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2009.24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2009.24