BRAND LOYALTY IN CONSUMER DURABLE GOODS

The aim of this research is to explore how loyal are consumers when replacing (i.e. how often they repurchase) a durable good and whether brand repurchase relates to replacement trigger, age of a replaced good, market importance of a replaced brand in the moment of replacement, or psychographic profile of a consumer. Data was collected as a part of a larger study on consumer durables and disposal behaviour in an online survey. Overall, results show low loyalty and low or unpredicted influence of observed variables which implies that future research should give more emphasis to study effects of loyalty efforts in the area of consumer durable goods. Results also show that the main replacement trigger is lag in technology. Brand managers of consumer durable should therefore be aware of a very brand switching nature of their consumers and take it into consideration when deciding whether to increase their efforts directed to brand relationship building or redirect it in other more fruitful direction, possibly stronger research and development. Apart from extending research to other product categories, spill over effects between product categories but within a brand should also be taken into consideration in the future studies.