A meta-model of customer brand loyalty and its antecedents

Abstract

This research consolidates existing knowledge about customer brand loyalty and its antecedents by developing and empirically validating an integrative meta-model. First, with a grounded theory literature review of 199 prior studies, the authors identify 275 antecedents of loyalty that they aggregate into four meta-concepts: (1) brand offer, (2) consumer–brand alignment, (3) brand experience, and (4) consumer–brand bonding. Second, the authors theoretically derive four alternative models that describe the interrelations of these meta-concepts and loyalty and empirically identify the most suitable one, using meta-analytical structural equation modeling. The findings, based on 1,261 effect sizes from 557 studies, provide support for a two-stage process, in which brand experience and consumer–brand bonding have direct effects on loyalty and mediate the effects of brand offer and consumer–brand alignment that precede them. The meta-model and associated empirical generalizations lay a robust, consolidated foundation for continued efforts to understand how to create and nurture loyalty.