The Role of Brand Relationship Quality and Cultural Values in Building Brand Loyalty in Social Commerce Environments

Rapid development of social commerce environments has made marketers and managers sense enormous business values in that, they hope to gain customer’s loyalty by utilizing social media platforms. This research aims to investigate the mediating role of brand relationship quality in influencing the effect of characteristics of brand pages on brand loyalty. Besides, this research covers the gap of investigating the role of cultural values in influencing brand relationship quality and brand loyalty, since no research focuses on how cultural values influence customer’s loyalty towards brands and their relationships with brands in social commerce environments. Results indicate that cultural values like individualism, and power distance positively influence the effect of brand relationship quality on brand loyalty, while indulgence negatively influences the relationship between brand relationship quality and brand loyalty. When it comes to managerial implications, the research suggests that brand marketers and managers need to maintain friendly relationships with their customers in order to attract their loyalty. Another implication for marketers and managers is that cultural values are so crucial in building up brand loyalty that it should not be ignored, they should consider how to retain customers with lower individualism scores and lower power distance scores, since they are less attractive in gaining brand loyalty in social commerce environments