DETERMINANTS OF CUSTOMER LOYALTY TOWARDS WATSONS PRIVATE LABEL BRANDS: MODERATOR ROLE OF HEALTH CONSCIOUSNESS

Abstract

Private label is rapidly placing great significance throughout the world nowadays with the brands are now being available in almost every product category. It refers to a range of products offered by a retailer under its own brand name and are usually cheaper than branded items. From the initial focus on low price strategy, private brands step into a quality and status positioning which using benefits from the retailers own private brand image. In the other words, private brands launched by retailers are not merely competing in terms of price, but also strived to access a significant market share traditionally owned by manufacturers. Even though private label brands are getting well-known and becoming more relevant to customers throughout the world, it is still not gaining the momentum in Asian market. The growth of private label brand was slow and considered as under developed in Asian region. In relation to the case of Watsons Malaysia, its market share of private label brands was lower than 1%, as compared with 45% in Switzerland and 8% in Singapore. This is despite having significantly huge loyalty card members in Malaysia. Thus, the general aim for this conceptual paper is to propose several factors that can be used to determine the relationship between those factors and customer loyalty of Watsons private label brands as well as the moderating effect of health consciousness in those relationships. Therefore, this paper has proposed several propositions with regards to the aim identified earlier; Proposition 1: Price influences the customer loyalty towards Watsons private label brands. Proposition 2: Perceived Quality influence the customer loyalty towards Watsons private label brands. Proposition 3: Perceived Value influence the customer loyalty towards Watsons private label brands. Proposition 4: Health consciousness moderates the relationship between price, perceived quality, perceived value and customer loyalty.