Construing purchase of fashion through Brand's Image, Attitude and Experience-Mediating effect of Brand Loyalty

Abstract

Fashionista in today’s modern environment consider brand loyalty as paramount aspect of their marketing strategy. With abundance of options and choices available to audience, customer’s repurchase intention towards the same brand weakens. Thus making a customer stick to a particular fashion brand is a challenging quest. It is of crucial importance for fashion brands to stand out in the competition. Brand Loyalty helps in gaining that sustainable advantage. In this study, we aim to understand and analyze the precedents of brand loyalty namely Experience, Attitude and Image in influencing the purchase of Fashion Brands. We also study the mediating effect of brand loyalty when it comes to purchase decision of fashion brands. The research paper aims to identify if there is any significant difference in brand loyalty and purchase decision in context of two broad categories of fashion i.e. Luxury and Mass Produced. In this study, quantitative approach was adopted through a self-designed questionnaire. Survey was filled by 468 consumers who are owners/shoppers of selected fashion brands. Using these data, the hypotheses and conceptual model is tested. Empirical findings based on structural equation modeling show that fashion brands with a higher brand loyalty positively effects the purchase decision. Moreover, research suggests that fashion brand experience highly influences brand loyalty as compared to brand attitude and image in case of luxury fashion brands. On the contrary brand image plays a crucial role in case of mass produced brands. The results of the study also confirm there is significant difference when it comes to luxury fashion brands purchase against mass produced fashion brand’s purchase decision. Further in the study important implications for fashion brand managers and future perspectives of the research are also discussed.