Summary
Consumers show their attitudes to brands through commitment and loyalty. The components of the consumers’ commitment include such options as “good value for money”, “nice quality” for the intention to buy products of a particular brand. If a consumer likes the brand, he/she will continue “using” it in the future. Thus, if positive attitudes to a brand are characterized by consumers’ loyalty and commitment, positive attitudes of consumers should be permanent over a certain period. However, there are still doubts if such attitudinal stability occurs over time. The study explores the question of “the over-time stability of the consumer’s expressed attitudinal beliefs, both overall intentions-to-buy and free-choice beliefs about specific brand attributes” (Riley, Ehrenberg, Castleberry, Barwise & Barnard 1997, p. 438).
Introduction
The authors of the article base their study on previous research on the positive attitudinal response in time relation to the usage of a brand and researches that proved the lack of stability of positive attitudinal responses over time. The study also provides new results conserving the issue based on the data that included variations of consumers’ attitudes for different brands in different categories of products in the USA and the UK. The data included: consumers’ attitude beliefs, claimed frequency of purchasing the products of a particular brand, and “descriptive” and “evaluative” attributes (Riley, Ehrenberg, Castleberry, Barwise & Barnard 1997).
Discussion
The previous research showed that attitudinal responses vary greatly with brand usage. The attitudinal response is dependent upon the structural market share effect (the number of users for example). The researchers also showed that “descriptive attributes” (based on the users/non-users patter) do not have an effect on the number of users the brand has, and thus, they do not reflect the consumers’ loyalty and commitment to the brand. But, the “evaluative” attribute “do differentiate in this way and reflect the brand-specific form of loyalty” (Riley, Ehrenberg, Castleberry, Barwise & Barnard 1997, p. 439). To explore the consumers’ attitudinal commitment and loyalty to the brand, the authors used the Double Jeopardy theory which showed that “it is not the brand with a lower degree of “liking” have less loyal or less committed consumers” (Riley, Ehrenberg, Castleberry, Barwise & Barnard 1997, p. 439).
To define the variability of attitudinal repeat-rates, the researchers conducted several interviews in the US and the UK which allowed them to measure the repeated-rates for different brands. The new results confirmed that there is great variability in the repeated-rate for different brands. The study also showed that this variation is not “brand-specific” as it is not based on the particular values of the brand, or how they are rated. The results of the study provide that the main factor is the “initial level of attribute response”. Thus, the findings can be considered to be “a classic Double Jeopardy pattern” which occurs in a new setting. Thus, the relationship between the repeated rate pattern and the initial response level can be defined while examining them through different countries, product categories, and attribute beliefs (Riley, Ehrenberg, Castleberry, Barwise & Barnard 1997, p. 446). According to the results of the study, consumer’s consistency of positive attitudes to a particular brand depends on the number of people that consider the brand a good one (in addition to the degree of loyalty).
Conclusion
Thus, the study showed that there are systematic variations in the attitudinal repeat-rates for different brands and that they are dependent upon the initial attitudinal responses and do not show the characteristic differences of consumers’ loyalty to the brand.
Reference List
Riley, F. D., Ehrenberg, A. S. C., Castleberry, S. B., Barwise, T. P., & Barnard, N. R. 1997, “The variability of attitudinal repeat-rates”, International Journal of Research in Marketing, vol. 14, issue 5, pp. 437 – 450.