MILLENNIALS BRAND LOYALTY IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY & THE ROLE OF BRAND IDENTITY

Brand loyalty has long been an important factor for companies’ sustainability and profitability, as it is less expensive to retain existing customers than acquiring new ones. In correlation to the importance of brand loyalty, there is a new vast generation, called the millennials’ or generation Y coming in to the market that is different than any generation before. This generational cohort has shown tendencies of being very disloyal, yet not all authors agree. Furthermore, some positive evidence has been found that millennials consider brands as a way of expressing their own identity and are driven by a need of having a trendy social image. The role of brand identity has therefore been chosen as an important key factor to examine this generation’s brand loyalty. Due to the poor research and the complexity of understanding millennial’s brand loyalty, the purpose of this study is to acknowledge the role of brand identity and to enhance the knowledge about brand loyalty of millennials when it comes to fashion brands.The research is of a quantitative and deductive nature where the primary data of the study was collected through surveys. 108 people participated in the study and the participants were millennials between an age interval of 18-38 years. The result of the study shows that there is a link between brand identity and brand image and that there is a positive relationship between brand image and brand loyalty. Moreover, comparing the brand image of two companies H&M and Ralph Lauren to the respondents’ brand loyalty towards the fast fashion and luxury fashion industry showed a correlation of equivalent loyalty towards the two industries. However, the respondents that were loyal towards the luxury fashion industry were shown to have a higher general brand loyalty.The findings of this research provide evidence that millennial can be loyal, but their loyalty may differ depending on the industry. Therefore, millennials display equal loyalty to the fast fashion and to the luxury fashion industry, but overall loyalty of luxury fashion followers is higher in general.