Is Brand Romance a Decent Predictor of Brand Loyalty? Evidence from Sri Lankan Automobile Market

Abstract

In a competitive automobile industry where consumers have a wide variety of automobile brands to choose from, it is imperative for marketers to foster brand loyalty in order to establish enduring consumer-brand relationships. Promotion brand romance has been suggested to marketers to cultivate emotional attachments between consumers and brands to increase brand loyalty. This study focused on determining the extent to which the three underlying dimensions of brand romance; namely pleasure, arousal and dominance predict brand loyalty among automobile users in the Southern province of Sri Lanka. 150 respondents participated in the study in total. The results indicated with respect to brand romance, respondents‟ current automobile brands generate brand pleasure and brand arousal, but the specific brands do not dominate the minds. Although respondents participating in the study did not exhibit strong levels of brand loyalty towards their current automobile brands, the three underlying dimensions of brand romance are statistically significant predictors of brand loyalty.