Emotional Attachment and Laundry Detergent Consumers’ Loyalty in Nairobi City County, Kenya

Abstract

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

Tracing and Determining the Duration of Illegal Sand Mining in Specific River Channels in the Limpopo Province

“…As a result, illegal river sand mining is becoming a widespread environmental problem in countries like China [7], Bangladesh [8], India [9,10], Kenya [11,12], Nigeria [13,14], South Africa [15][16][17][18][19][20] and Botswana [21]. Within these countries, such mining activity is driven by different factors.…”