An Empirical Analysis of the Relationship Between Brand Loyalty and Consumer Price Elasticity

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This empirical paper explores the relationship between consumer brand preference or loyalty and price elasticity in purchase behavior. This behavior is conceptualized as resulting from two distinct but related decisions, namely a brand choice decision and a purchase quantity decision. We argue that loyal consumers will be less price sensitive in the choice decision than nonloyal consumers. However, this direction is expected to be reversed in the quantity decision with loyal consumers expected to be more price sensitive than nonloyal consumers. We model the choice and quantity decisions jointly using the limited dependent variable framework described in Krishnamurthi and Raj. The data used are diary panel data on a frequently purchased product class from BURKE and caffeinated ground coffee scanner data from IRI. We show that loyals are less price sensitive than nonloyals in the choice decision but more price sensitive in the quantity decision. Managerial implications of the differing elasticities are discussed.