What long term measures can tell us about brand loyalty

Since Day (1968) and Dick & Basu (1994) the possibility that true loyalty can be distinguished from spurious loyalty and therefore managed has been supported by countless studies linking cognitive attitudinal models to stated purchase intention. Studies linking attitudinal and behavioural measures are rare, and also unreliable. Cognitive modelling, being cross sectional, assumes sustained competitive advantage and rarely if ever takes into account the possibility that if one brand can influence its consumer-based brand equity, the effect is unlikely to be persistent, because the available choice-alternatives are trying equally hard in the opposite direction. How then should brand loyalty be conceptualised, let alone operationalized? In this study our starting point was with time: the value of repeat-buying to a firm is not in cross section, or in a quarter or two, but in a strategic, long term time frame. Repeat-buying is the marketing efficiency that delivers improved cash flow and predictable sales that can be valued as brand equity. But repeat buying loyalty seems totally immune to marketing manipulation. The only way to influence it is to raise the brand’s penetration.