Levels and factors of brand loyalty towards beer brands: The case of a developing country perspective, Ethiopia

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