Social identity perspective on brand loyalty

This paper proposes a social identity perspective of customer brand relationship and integrates brand identity and identification with value, trust and satisfaction in predicting brand loyalty. Two studies' empirical results support this path to brand loyalty framework. The results offer several theoretical implications. First, this research confirms the presence of significant direct and indirect effects of brand identity and brand identification on traditional antecedents of brand loyalty (i.e. perceived value, satisfaction, and trust). Second, the research suggests that social identification perspective of brand loyalty can integrate with other perspectives to model the consumer's psychological path to brand loyalty. Third, the research confirms the pivotal role of brand identification in brand loyalty development and stresses the mediation effect of brand identification on the effects of brand identity on the path to brand loyalty. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.