Brand Loyalty and Service Loyalty

Scientific literature proposes an understanding of loyalty generally speaking from a multidi­mensional perspective (Day, 1969, Brandt, 2000) although it is usually understood from the conative, attitudinal and cognitive perspectives.

From the conative point of view, faithfulness is understood as a repetitive purchase behavior of people or organizations (Bass, 1974, Dick and Basu, 1994; Fournier, 1998) improving the relationship between the two sides (Yi, 1990). From the attitudinal standpoint, loyalty is seen as a feeling of attachment of individuals to a product, service or company (Hallowell, 1996). Finally, the cognitive viewpoint of loyalty includes the two previous approaches, focusing on the results of the brand (Segarra, 2007).

Even though most of the research has tradition­ally been centred on customer loyalty in relation to tangible assets (brand loyalty), the other sec­tors, particularly the service sector, should not be forgotten.

Many customers understand faithfulness or loyalty in terms of working with an entity regu­larly or just with the level of satisfaction that their entity offers. In this sense, loyalty is defined as a “continuum” where the relationships depend on attitudinal and behavioral components discussed above.

There are many classifications that have been made about loyalty using different criteria, based on: purchase patterns of consumers (Brown, 1952), strength or integrity of the individual and the social or community support (Oliver, 1999), satisfaction, involvement and commitment (Diller, 2000), or the relationship between customers and company (Christopher et al., 1994), etc.

The most noticeable consequences of loyalty are the reduction in the search of new shopping alternatives, positive word of mouth a growth of the number of recommendations, attraction of new customers, better perception of sales efforts and increased recurring purchasing, among others.