Abstract:
The study was done in Ethiopia three cities. The success of any business is highly dependent on
getting and maintaining customers. Many firms try to sphere their operations aiming customers
through measuring customers’ satisfaction. Recent research findings indicated that satisfaction alone
did not guaranty the long term survival. Loyalty is a better indicator in this aspect since it incorporates
satisfaction as an antecedent factor. This study was conducted to investigate influential factors of
brand loyalty, and different loyalty level of beer consumers in Ethiopian context that would shed light
on other developing countries too. The research approach was quantitative wherein the two best known
brand loyalty measurement models have been used. Data was collected via questionnaires from 400
respondents consuming two dominant brands in the selected three cities. The software used for
analysis was statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) statistics version 20. Principal components
analysis was used to analyze the data determine, and the main components that are statistically and
practically significant. The findings indicated that among 13 brand loyalty influences identified in the
model, brand trust, breweries marketing activity, culture, repeat purchase and the combination of brand
relevance and brand performance had the highest influences on consumer loyalty. The study
concluded that the level of brand loyalty of beer consumers were not in one loyalty stage and almost
1/3 consumers were not totally loyal for their respective beer choice. The result of the research clearly
indicated that breweries must focus on the ten most significant brand loyalty factors, and adjust their
overall marketing strategy according to the beer consumers’ loyalty level. Due to brand proliferation of
beers in Ethiopian context, the level of brand loyalty has to be taken as segmenting criteria to develop
marketing strategies and decisions. The research is done in two brands, and the geographic coverage
consists of three major cities, thus this research could be done at large scale by taking into account
geographic and demographic difference of beer consumers
