Customer Loyalty: Do Brands Still Matter?

The conventional wisdom holds that consumers’ brand loyalty is a function of their perceived brand performance. However, recent studies have shown that loyalty may be affected by non-performance factors, such as brand parity, brand size, and a consumer’s propensity to be loyal. This study explored the three effects on brand loyalty in a tourism context, and lent partial support to their direct effects on loyalty. Specifically, it was revealed that respondents’ attitudinal loyalty was significantly and positively related to their loyalty proneness, and their behavioral loyalty was significantly and positively related to a brand’s market share. However, brand parity did not seem to affect respondents’ attitudinal loyalty but was found to have a slightly positive effect on respondents’ behavioral loyalty. These results suggest that the three effects on loyalty could be more complicated than originally conceptualize