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ABSTRACT
The basic aim of this study is to find out the customer brand loyalty and sales performance of products. The study actually examines the extent to which customer brand loyalty reinforce consumers attitude in the choice of products and services and how it implies a consistent repurchase pattern of the brand as a result of positive affection towards the brand (Mellens, Dekimpe and Steekamp, 1996). The study was designed to focus on customer brand loyalty and sales performance of products (a case study of p-z industry Port Harcourt, Rivers State) where primary data, via questionnaire were collected. The population of this study constitutes management and staff of P-Z industry in Port Harcourt was 200. The sample size of this study was judgmental sample of 133 respondents which comprise of both the senior and junior staff of P-Z industry in Port Harcourt. In this study both primary and secondary data were used. The statistical test used in the analysis of the data collected was the chi-square statistical tool. Finding amongst others reveal that there is a significant relationship between customer brand loyalty and sales performance. The study therefore concluded that firms in making decision on products and services components, promotional mix should take into consideration the attitudinal disposition of customers towards its promotional activities through developing good image and relationship with its customer. It is recommended to the functional institution as it will enable them to know how to satisfy and sustain their customers, the study of brand loyalty and customer brand should be crucial. Because consumer behaviours is extremely complicated and marketers need to better understand other moderators to the attitude behavior links. researcher and marketer should understand the variable that determine loyalty to a company or product and to distinguished between brand and customer loyalty, although there is no much differences between the two concept, customer brand loyalty should be seem as a sequential or chronological way to reinforce the sales performance of products in any organization.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE i
COVER PAGE ii
DECLARATION iii
CERTIFICATION iv
DEDICATION v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi
ABSTRACT vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS viii
CHAPTER ONE 1
INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY 1
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM 5
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 6
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 6
1.5 RESEARCH HYPOTHESES 7
1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 8
1.7 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 8
1.8 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 9
1.9 DEFINITION OF KEY CONCEPTS/TERMS 9
CHAPTER TWO 11
2.1 INTRODUCTION 11
2.2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 11
2.2.1 CUSTOMER BRAND LOYALTY 12
2.2.2 BRAND IMAGE 14
2.2.3 BRAND EXPERIENCE 16
2.2.4 CUSTOMER SATISFACTION 17
2.2.5 CONCEPT OF SALES PERFORMANCE 19
2.2.6 MEASURES OF SALES PERFORMANCE 19
2.2.7 DIMENSIONS OF CUSTOMER LOYALTY 25
2.3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 27
2.4 REVIEW OF RELATED EMPIRICAL STUDIES 31
2.5 SUMMARY OF REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 33
CHAPTER THREE 35
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 35
3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN 35
3.2 POPULATION OF THE STUDY 35
3.3 SAMPLE AND SAMPLING TECHNIQUES 35
3.4 SOURCE OF DATE 36
3.5 INSTRUMENT FOR DATA COLLECTION 37
3.6 VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY OF INSTRUMENT 37
3.7 METHOD OF DATA ANALYSIS 38
CHAPTER FOUR 39
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS 39
4.1 QUESTIONNAIRE DISTRIBUTION AND RETRIEVAL: 39
4.2 DATA ANALYSIS 40
4.3 TEST OF HYPOTHESIS: 47
4.4 DISCUSSION OF THE FINDINGS: 50
CHAPTER FIVE 54
5.1 INTRODUCTION 54
5.2 SUMMARY 54
5.3 CONCLUSION 55
5.4 RECOMMENDATIONS 55
REFERENCES 57
APPENDIX I 59
APPENDIX II 60
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
One of the key issues of marketing theory and practice during the last decades, regard building, maintaining and developing brand loyalty in order to gain sustainable competitive advantages. Considering the dynamic marketing environment and fierce competition, brand loyalty as core dimension of brand equity is essential for any company that plans to maintain long term competitive advantages and commercial performance. The role and importance of brand loyalty as fundamental parameter for establishing marketing strategies has been widely adopted in developed countries.
The concept of both brand loyalty and customer loyalty or equity have been viewed from a variety of perspective during the last decades. Aaker (1991) defines brand equity as a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm/or to that firms customers. Although the assets and liabilities on which brand equity is based will differ from context to context, they can be usefully grouped into brand loyalty, brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations and other proprietary brand assets. Among all, brand loyalty is the most important dimension and the core of a brand’s equity, being in some author’s views, the ultimate objective and meaning of brand equity (Tarvis, 2000).
However, research in both brand loyalty and customer loyalty uses the same multi-dimensional constructs of affective and behavioural approach. Keller (2008) considers brand equity from a customer based perspective as being the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. Brand knowledge is defined in terms of awareness and image, brand awareness being the consumers ability to identify the brand under different conditions (recognition, and/or recall). While brand image is being defined as a set of brand associations held in consumer’s memory.
Brands comprise the logo, the pictorial representation of the company or organization, the signature of the company. according to the American Marketing Association a brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors.
Today a brand is also represented by a personality and a signature tune to capture the hearts of consumers and keep them loyal (Keller, 1998).
Strong brands have a number of benefits for a company, the retailer, the consumer and for society, as a whole. Strong brands help the consumer locate and identify products and evaluate their quality and makes it easier for them to develop attitudes and expectations (Pelsmacker, Genens, and Van den Bergh, 2001).
Thus, brand loyalty is viewed as the reflection of brand strength, being the essential output of what brand awareness and brand image can generate.
Brand loyalty, in marketing consists of a consumers commitment to repurchase a particular brand or continue to use the brand. It can be demonstrated by repeated buying of a product, service or other positive behaviours such as word of mouth advocacy. This concept of a brand displays imagery and symbolism for a product or range of products.
Brand loyalty is not limited to repeat purchase behaviour, as there is deeper psychological reasoning as to why an individual will continuously repurchase products from one brand. Brand loyalty can be shortly defined as the behavioural willingness to consistently maintain relations with a particular brand. Brand loyalty is a good measure for managers to use when trying to predict brand performance of communication when trying to promote a certain product that’s not doing as well as other succeeding products. Marketers are able to look at patterns of brand loyalty and pick out characteristics that make that products there.
Oliver defines customer loyalty as a deeply held commitment to re-buy or re-patronize a preferred product or service consistency in the future despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behaviour.
Oliver (1999) proposed four (4) categories of customer loyalty based on the assumption that the consumers first process information to form beliefs use those beliefs as the basis for attitudes and then make behavioural decisions on relative attitude strength.
The behavioural typology to the approach of customer loyalty is primarily concerned with measures of repeat purchase proportion of purchase and frequency of purchase. The popularity of the measures as varied over time and among researchers as both categories have their strengths and weakness (Mellens, Dekimpe and Steenkimp, 1996), behavioural measures defined brand loyalty in terms of the actual purchases observed over a certain time period (Mellens, et al; 1996).
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Due to the fact that service organizations appreciate the needs to offer quality services at all times to their customers. This expectation is not always realized due to the nature of services which vary in different ways including the production process and the outcome.
It is obvious that customer’s services do fail in the process of delivery that is why customer brand loyalty has contributed immensely to the rate of consumption of product and service in Rivers State, Port Harcourt . The problems of this study will sort to evaluate customer induced services failures due to the customers asking for special treatment which the contact persons can hardly offer without breaking laid down rules of the sales personnel, always in the delivery services, poor services, delivery of the sales person and bad information that resulted in the purchase of wrong size of goods or items that did not perform as the customers/consumers were expected.
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
Since organization products, services and experiences are supported by customers services terms and customer brand loyalty is vitally important to a company success.
Thus, this study will eventually determine the following:
1. The extent to which customer’s brand loyalty influences sales performance of an organization products.
2. The extent to which company’s brand reinforce customer’s attitudes in service.
3. The extent to which customer brand loyalty facilitate sales choice of a particular products, goods and services.
4. To which extent does brand awareness affect customer’s decision making.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
It is worth remembering that many of the concepts as well as many of the specific techniques, will work equally well, whether they are directed at goods and services. In particular, this study will seek answers to the following questions.
1. What is the relationship that exists between customer brand loyalty and sale performance of a particular product?
2. What relationship exists between customer’s loyalty an attitude in service?
3. What relationship exists between customer’s brand loyalty and sales performance of a company’s products.
4. What relationship exists between brand awareness and customers decision in services?
1.5 RESEARCH HYPOTHESES
In course of this study, the researcher made the propositions.
Ho1: There is no significant relationship between customer brand loyalty and sale performance of a particular product.
Ho2: There is no significant relationship between customers loyalty and attitudes in service.
Ho3: There is no significant relationship between customer brand loyalty and sale performance of P-z product.
Ho4: There is no significant relationship between brand awareness and customer’s decision in services.
1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The study is focused towards gaining detail insight on the customer’s brand loyalty and sales performance of PZ products in Port Harcourt. This term project will be beneficial to people in the society.
It will also serve as a framework for scholars and students who are researching on the customer’s brand loyalty and sales performance of PZ products in Rivers state, Port Harcourt.
1.7 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The study is delimited under the following heading: content scope, geographical scope and unit of analysis.
Content Scope: the content scope of this study involves an investigation to ascertain the relationship between customer brand loyalty and sales performance of products. The dependent variable is measured by sales volume, market share and profitability. While independent variable is customer brand loyalty measure by brand image, brand experience and customer satisfaction.
Geographical Scope: This study is delimited in Port Harcourt with references to PZ industries.
Unit of Analysis: The unit of analysis in this research involves both senior and junior staffs of PZ industries at the time of carrying out the study.
This study involves an investigation of customer brand loyalty and sales performance of products. Hence it is a micro level study.
1.8 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
Several constraints were peculiar, the investigation on this topic, such as lack of time and money needed to visit libraries to collate materials related to the study at hand, non-availability of relevant and well enunciated journal, and text posed a great deal of problems since one only relied on documents, unfavorable attitude of some respondents also serve as a problem to the problem at hand. Meanwhile, relevant fact related to the problem at hand were gathered and the study is still useful to those who want to undergoes further study on this field.
1.9 DEFINITION OF KEY CONCEPTS/TERMS
The key terms used in the study and meaning are as follows.
Brand Loyalty: Can be defined as the behavioural willingness to consistently maintain relations with a particular brand.
Brand: Is a name, term, sign, symbol or design or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors.
Brand Equity: As a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm/or to that firms customers.
Brand Knowledge: Is defined in terms of awareness and images, brand awareness being the consumers ability to identify the brand under different conditions (recognition and/or recall).
Brand Image: Is being defined as a set of brand association held in consumer’s memory.
Customer Loyalty: As a deeply held commitment to re-buy or re-patronize a preferred product or service consistently in the future despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behaviour.