Emotional Attachment and Laundry Detergent Consumers'Loyalty in Nairobi City County, Kenya IntroductionIn the global marketplace an emerging trend is the focus of marketing effort in propagating long-term relations with customers (Levy & Hino, 2016; Morgan & Hunt, 1994), as a consumer who develops a strong relationship with a brand is less costly to maintain and are willing to repurchase products or services which deliver value that exceed their expectations (Seock & Lin, 2011;Tarus & Rabach, 2013). This is evident in highly competitive markets with decreasing product differentiation, which make loyalty a key ingredient in the creation of a solid consumer base and a sustainable firm (Hur, Kang & Kim, 2015), as by developing a relationship with the brand, consumers aim to derive emotional, psychological and socio-cultural benefits from the brand (Aurier & Lanause, 2012).Extant research on brand relationship shows it has been conceptualised in diverse dimensions by different scholars. Veloutsuo (2007) suggested that brand relationship consists of two-way communication and emotional exchange, while Peng, Chen and Wen (2014) viewed brand attachment and brand identification as key components of brand relationship. Among the above dimensions, emotional attachment has emerged as salient constructs in the study of brand relationship. This study will focus on emotional attachment in determining its effect on loyalty.Within the global laundry detergent market, trends such as the growth of single person households in need of package sizes that meet their cleaning needs and increase in urban household population (Nielsen, 2016) have been observed as increasing competition in the market. In Kenya, the laundry detergents market is very competitive (Kamau, 2013), and in this highly competitive context, the importance of loyalty is gaining prominence thus compelling manufacturers to build and maintain a loyal base of consumers to enable the penetration and survival of their brands in the market (Rundle-Thierry & Bennett, 2001).Emotional attachment has been shown by past studies to have an effect on loyalty. However, past studies on emotional attachment have mainly focussed on its determinants (Patwardhan & Balasubramanian, 2011) while few have focussed on emotional attachment as having an effect on loyalty (Bahri-Ammari et al, 2016; Levy & Hino, 2016). In the Kenyan context, several studies have been done to ascertain drivers of loyalty, however, studies by Wangari (2012), in the
A topical trend in marketing has been the development of long-term brand relationships in building loyalty, as opposed to transaction based relationships which are deemed superficial in nature, in the fast moving consumer goods market. Brand relationships are key in building lasting consumer-brand bonds that result in loyalty. However, empirical studies focussing on brand relationships and their effect on loyalty and the role of satisfaction in the development of these relationships are scarce especially in developing countries and more so in Kenya. Therefore, to fill this gap this study first sought to investigate the effect of brand relationship on loyalty and then establish the mediating effect of customer satisfaction on the relationship between brand relationship and loyalty in the detergent industry. This research adopted the positivistic philosophy, the explanatory research design and was cross-sectional in nature. The target population was households, as detergent consumers, in 11 sub-counties in Nairobi City County, Kenya, from which a sample of 400 households consumers were selected using cluster and simple random sampling, and the Kish grid at the household level. A household was regarded as a single detergent purchase and consumption unit. Primary data was collected using a selfadministered questionnaire and analysed using SPSS 25. Based on the data analysis, brand relationship, as a composite value of brand trust, brand communication and emotional attachment, was found to have a positive effect on loyalty, while customer satisfaction was also found to have a partial mediating effect on the relationship between brand relationship and loyalty. The study thus concluded that customer satisfaction has a significant mediating effect on the relationship between brand relationship and loyalty. The study findings can be applied in the development of customer satisfaction programs to nurture brand relationships and consequently increase loyalty to laundry detergent brands.
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