关键词: 品牌忠诚, 品牌信任, 品牌情感, 消费经历一致性

Abstract: The topic of brand loyalty has been of great interest to marketing researchers for many years. Previous researchers have recognized both brand trust and brand affect significantly affect brand loyalty judgements. However only a few studies have investigated turstful and affective antecedents of brand loyalty simutaneously. Although previous studies identify the key roles of brand trust and brand affect in influencing brand loyalty, it is important to acknowledge that previous work has largely been static in nature. This represents a significant research gap because it is well established brand loyalty is a dynamic phenomenon and which should be viewed from a dynamic perpective. Based on this background, our study investigates brand loyalty and brand affect simultaneously as dirvers to brand loyalty in a dynamic context. The fundamental proposition of our study is that the roole of trust and affect may change over time. More specifically, we argue that affect plays its strongest role at early stages of brand loyalty development because when the customers are lack of knowledge about the brand. As experience accumulates, however, the impact of brand trust should increase.
In order to fit this research gap, this research provides a dynamic framework about the influence from brand affect and brand trust to brand loyalty over time. Our sample consisted of 160 marketing students enrolled in a simulative situational restaurant at a large Chinese university. Because the students are very familiar with consumption situation of the restaurant, this sample is particularly relevant and appropriate. We estimated the three regression models by using the maximum likelihood method in SPSS.
The results of a dynamic experimental study indicate that the impact of brand trust on the brand loyalty evaluation increases and the influence of brand affect decreases over time. Moreover, these effects are attenuated with inconsistent performance experiences. Finally, the study shows that the variance in brand loyalty jointly explained by brand trust and brand affect increases as experience accumulates.
Several implications follow from our study. Firstly, we illustrate the importance of examining brand loyalty from a dynamic perspective. Secondly, we show that the antecedents leading to brand loyalty vary over time. Thus capturing brand loyalty judgments at only one time may not provide a full picture of the underlying process. Moreover, the result also suggests that marketers should view the brand loyalty from a global perspective, the marketers should take different market strategies according to the changing role of the antecedents of the brand loyalty.

Key words: brand loyalty, brand trust, brand affect, consistency of customer experience