A Fuzzy MCDM Analytic Model for Building Customers’ Brand Attachment Preference in Car Firms

Abstract

The more attached a customer becomes toward a specific brand, the stronger the extent of customer loyalty he or she will present. However, studies on brand attachment (BA) have been limited to the perspectives of enterprises about the manner in which to consolidate customer loyalty while opinions and views of customers are absent. This study integrates the views of enterprises and those of customers to build a BA-based multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model and adopts consistent fuzzy linguistic preference relations (CFLPR) to conduct empirical research on three car brands, namely Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW, by analyzing differences in customers’ BA preference to the three brands and assessing management performance. Findings reveal that the customers of the two German brands, Mercedes-Benz and BMW, emphasize hedonic needs while customers of Lexus, the Japanese brand, stress on bonds of personal emotional factors. Apart from being able to measure the precise strength of customers’ BAs, this analytic model can also help enterprises to examine changes of factors concerning customers’ BA on a regular basis as well as serving as the foundation for evoking consumers’ identification about brand personality, consolidating brand loyalty, and developing marketing communications strategies.