Understanding the Influence of Brand Relationships on Brand Loyalty; with Mediating Role of Brand Engagement

Abstract

In today's tough competitive market when consumers have plenty of brand options available developing brand loyalty is very essential to retain the customers and to compete in the market of Pakistan. The variables considered for this study is brand love, self-brand connection, brand identification, band trnst have not been studied holistically and subjectively by any of the previous studies conducted on the topic. The current study investigates the collective influence of above mention variables v.:itl1 mediating influence of brand engagement that is the gap in the literature on brand loyalty in relation to brand relationships which this study is trying to address. The data is collected from 300 participants of twin cities Rawalpindi & Islamabad and empirical analysis is conducted with PLS-SEM (partial least square, standard equation modeling) technique. The finding of this study explains that brand love and brand identification do not have a direct influence on brand loyalty instead with mediation effect of brand engagement the loyalty can be gain, whereas self-brand connection does have a direct influence on brand loyalty but Brand engagement doesn't mediate between both, furthermore the brand trust has both direct and indirect influence on brand loyalty. This study provides new evidence to literature that brand trust is most effective among four above mention brand relationships moreover brand engagement mediates the relationship between brand relationships and loyalty except just one which is self-brand connection.