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Abstract
The aim of this paper is to present the empirical tests of two measures of attitudinal brand loyalty to identify if they are items of a single construct or two distinct constructs. These two measures are an individual's propensity to be brand loyal, and attitude towards the act of purchasing a specific brand This paper also seeks to determine which of these measures would be more useful for explaining purchasing behaviour The results confirm the hypothesis that there is no significant relationship between the two measures in the business services market This indicates that they are in fact not measures of the some concept but two separate concepts. Aggregating the scores from both measures to form a single score for attitudinal loyalty would reduce richness of explanation for marketing practitioners. In addition, the results suggest that the attitude towards the act of purchasing a brand can be used to explain or predict purchasing behaviour.
INTRODUCTION
There is no consensus in the marketing literature on how loyalty should be measured. This paper focuses on one concept (or dimension) of loyalty, namely attitudinal loyalty, and presents justification for the continued consideration of this concept by researchers and marketing managers alike. There is no agreement on the measurement of attitudinal loyalty. According to Soloman,1 attitudinal loyalty can be measured with measures of attitude towards the brand, or measures of attitude towards the act of purchasing a brand. More recently researchers have suggested that attitudinal loyalty can be measured by capturing the individual's propensity to be loyal.
This paper responds directly to Mellens et al.'s2 suggestion that attitudinal brand loyalty should be measured using both individual-level (eg propensity to be loyal) and brand-related measures (eg attitude towards the act of purchasing the brand). It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that it is not appropriate to use both types of measures, a view also supported by other researchers.3
This research compares two types of attitudinal loyalty measures to determine which would be more useful for marketing practitioners. The paper proposes that attitude towards the act measures can better explain actual behaviour than the individual's propensity to be brand loyal. The next section will define the concept of attitudinal loyalty, and continue with a discussion of...