Institute of Business Studies and Leadership, Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, KP, Pakistan.
School of Management, Air University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
PLoS One. 2023 Apr 27;18(4):e0285193. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285193. eCollection 2023.
Despite the potential for businesses, our understanding of lovemark brands and their consequences is limited. Numerous psychological and brand-related consequences are linked to lovemarks, but the role of influential underlining mechanisms is not fully understood. Inspired by the norms of reciprocity theory, the current study investigates the underlining role of customer advocacy in the relationship between perceived lovemarks and brand loyalty of customers in the automobile industry.
By adopting the survey method, a sample of 478 was drawn from Pakistani automobile customers. Structural equation modelling was used for the analysis. We conceptualised lovemarks and brand loyalty as reflective higher-order constructs that we analysed through a two-stage disjoint analysis.
Our results support the conceptualization of lovemarks and brand loyalty as higher-order constructs. The influence of lovemarks and customer advocacy on brand loyalty was statistically significant when we controlled for age, gender, and income. Our findings also reveal that customer advocacy, seen as a company's positive interactions, mediates and play a key role in influencing the relationship between lovemarks and brand loyalty.
This is among the first studies to examine the role of customer advocacy in the lovemarks-brand loyalty relationship. We examined these relationships in the automobile sector of Pakistan, which offers several theoretical and managerial implications for academia and practitioners. The implications are proposed and outlined in this study.
尽管商业潜力巨大，但我们对爱情品牌及其后果的理解是有限的。许多与心理学和品牌相关的后果都与爱情品牌有关，但人们对其潜在的影响机制还没有充分的了解。受互惠规范理论的启发，本研究考察了在汽车行业中，客户倡导在感知爱情品牌与客户品牌忠诚度之间的关系中的潜在作用。
本研究通过采用问卷调查的方法，从巴基斯坦汽车客户中抽取了 478 个样本。采用结构方程模型进行分析。我们将爱情品牌和品牌忠诚度概念化为反射高阶结构，并通过两阶段不相交分析进行分析。
我们的研究结果支持爱情品牌和品牌忠诚度作为高阶结构的概念化。当我们控制年龄、性别和收入等因素时，爱情品牌和客户倡导对品牌忠诚度的影响具有统计学意义。我们的研究结果还表明，客户倡导作为公司的积极互动，在影响爱情品牌和品牌忠诚度之间的关系方面具有中介作用，并发挥着关键作用。
这是首批研究客户倡导在爱情品牌与品牌忠诚度关系中作用的研究之一。我们在巴基斯坦的汽车行业中检验了这些关系，这为学术界和从业者提供了一些理论和管理上的启示。本研究提出并概述了这些启示。
