Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Heart, head, and hand: a tripartite conceptualization, operationalization, and examination of brand loyalty

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Journal of Brand Management Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Customers’ brand loyalty is a complex concept including cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dimensions. Most research on customers’ brand loyalty focuses on conditions (based on relative levels of loyalty, attitudes, and behaviors) or stages of loyalty formation. This study focuses on measurement of the ways loyal customers are committed to the brand, using a tripartite conceptualization, that captures its emotional, cognitive, and habitual components termed heart, head, and hand loyalty, respectively. These components are operationalized into a 16-item scale, which was refined and tested in a series of four surveys that examined multiple product categories. The predictive validity of the scales is demonstrated through a latent class analysis that reveals multiple loyalty segments within each product category, each exhibiting differing combinations of heart, head, and hand loyalty. This work offers guidance to researchers who wish to purposefully measure multiple components of brand loyalty. It also provides managers with a tool to measure and understand the strength and types of loyalty their customers have toward their brand.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Anderson, J.C., and D.W. Gerbing. 1988. Structural equation modeling in practice: A review and recommended two-step approach. Psychological Bulletin 103(3): 411.

    Google Scholar 

  • Andreasen, A.R. 1983. Consumer satisfaction in loose monopolies: The case of medical care. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 2: 122–135.

    Google Scholar 

  • Andreasen, A.R. 1985. Consumer responses to dissatisfaction in loose monopolies. Journal of Consumer Research 12(2): 135–141.

    Google Scholar 

  • Assael, H. 1992. Consumer behavior and marketing action. Boston: PWS-KENT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baldus, B.J., C. Voorhees, and R. Calantone. 2015. Online brand community engagement: Scale development and validation. Journal of Business Research 68(5): 978–985.

    Google Scholar 

  • Batra, R., and D.M. Stayman. 1990. The role of mood in advertising effectiveness. Journal of Consumer Research 17(2): 203–214.

    Google Scholar 

  • Belk, R.W. 1988. Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research 15(2): 139–168.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, R., and S. Rundle-Thiele. 2002. A comparison of attitudinal loyalty measurement approaches. Brand Management 9(3): 193–209.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bock, D.E., S.M. Mangus, and J.A.G. Folse. 2016. The road to customer loyalty paved with service customization. Journal of Business Research 69(10): 3923–3932.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campo, K., E. Gijsbrechts, and P. Nisol. 2000. Towards understanding consumer response to stock-outs. Journal of Retailing 76(2): 219–242.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cossío-Silva, F.J., M.Á. Revilla-Camacho, M. Vega-Vázquez, and B. Palacios-Florencio. 2016. Value co-creation and customer loyalty. Journal of Business Research 69(5): 1621–1625.

    Google Scholar 

  • Churchill Jr., G.A. 1979. A paradigm for developing better measures of marketing constructs. Journal of Marketing Research 16(1): 64–73.

    Google Scholar 

  • Corsten, D., and T. Gruen. 2003. Desperately seeking shelf availability: An examination of the extent, the causes, and the efforts to address retail out-of-stocks. International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management 31(12): 605–617.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coupland, J.C. 2005. Invisible brands: An ethnography of households and the brands in their kitchen pantries. Journal of Consumer Research 32(1): 106–118.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coyles, S., and T.C. Gokey. 2005. Customer retention is not enough. Journal of Consumer Marketing 22(2): 101–105.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Ruyter, K., M. Wetzels, and J. Bloemer. 1998. On the relationship between perceived service quality, service loyalty and switching costs. International Journal of Service Industry Management 9(5): 436–453.

    Google Scholar 

  • DeVellis, R.F. 2012. Scale development: Theory and applications. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dick, A.S., and K. Basu. 1994. Customer loyalty: Toward an integrated conceptual framework. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 22(2): 99–113.

    Google Scholar 

  • Escalas, J.E., and J.R. Bettman. 2003. You are what they eat: The influence of reference groups on consumers’ connections to brands. Journal of Consumer Psychology 13(3): 339–348.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fornell, C., and D.F. Larcker. 1981. Structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error: Algebra and statistics. Journal of Marketing Research 18(3): 382–388.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fournier, S. 1998. Consumers and their brands: Developing relationship theory in consumer research. Journal of Consumer Research 24(4): 343–353.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gounaris, S., and V. Stathakopoulos. 2004. Antecedents and consequences of brand loyalty: An empirical study. Journal of Brand Management 11(4): 283–306.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guo, L., S.L. Lotz, C. Tang, and T.W. Gruen. 2016. The role of perceived control in customer value co-creation and service recovery evaluation. Journal of Service Research 19(1): 39–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guo, L., T.W. Gruen, and C. Tang. 2017. Seeing relationships through the lens of psychological contracts: The structure of consumer service relationships. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 3(45): 357–376.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hair, J.F., B.J. Babin, R.E. Anderson, and W.C. Black. 2018. Multivariate data analysis. 8th ed. London: Cengage Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacoby, J., and R.W. Chestnut. 1978. Brand loyalty: Measurement and management. New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, T.O., and W.E. Sasser. 1995. Why satisfied customer defects? Harvard Business Review 73: 88–99.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kabiraj, S., and J. Shanmugan. 2011. Development of a conceptual framework for brand loyalty: A Euro-Mediterranean perspective. Journal of Brand Management 18(4–5): 285–299.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kamboj, S., and Z. Raheem. 2016. The influence of user participation in social media-based brand communities on brand loyalty: Age and gender as moderators. Journal of Brand Management 23(6): 679–700.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keiningham, T.L., L. Aksoy, B. Cooil, and T.W. Andreassen. 2008. Linking customer loyalty to growth. MIT Sloan Management Review 49(4): 51–57.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knox, S., and D. Walker. 2001. Measuring and managing brand loyalty. Journal of Strategic Marketing 9(2): 111–128.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lafley, A.G., and R.L. Martin. 2017. Customer loyalty is overrated. Harvard Business Review 95: 47–54.

    Google Scholar 

  • Magidson, J., and J. Vermunt. 2002. Latent class models for clustering: A comparison with K-means. Canadian Journal of Marketing Research 20(1): 36–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matthews, D.R., J. Son, and K. Watchravesringkan. 2014. An exploration of brand equity antecedents concerning brand loyalty: A cognitive, affective, and conative perspective. Journal of Business and Retail Management Research 9(1): 26–38.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ngobo, P.V. 2016. The trajectory of customer loyalty: An empirical test of Dick and Basu’s loyalty framework. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 45(2): 229–250.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nordhielm, C., and T. Williams. 2008. Head, hand, heart: Functional and emotional aspects of brand relationships. Advances in Consumer Research 35: 176–180.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oliver, R.L. 1999. Whence consumer loyalty? The Journal of Marketing 64: 33–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olsen, L.L., and M.D. Johnson. 2003. Service equity, satisfaction, and loyalty: From transaction-specific to cumulative evaluations. Journal of Service Research 5(3): 184–195.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reichheld, F.F., and T. Teal. 2001. The loyalty effect: The hidden force behind growth, profits, and lasting value. Brighton: Harvard Business Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rowley, J. 2005. The four Cs of customer loyalty. Marketing Intelligence and Planning 23(6): 574–581.

    Google Scholar 

  • Russo, I., I. Confente, D.M. Gligor, and C.W. Autry. 2016. To be or not to be (loyal): Is there a recipe for customer loyalty in the B2B context? Journal of Business Research 69(2): 888–896.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheth, J.N., and C.W. Park. 1974. A theory of multidimensional brand loyalty. Advances in Consumer Research 1: 449–459.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sirgy, M.J., J.S. Johar, A.C. Samli, and C.B. Claiborne. 1991. Self-congruity versus functional congruity: Predictors of consumer behavior. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 19(4): 363–375.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevens, J.P. 2001. Applied multivariate statistics for the social sciences. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomson, M., D.J. MacInnis, and C.W. Park. 2005. The ties that bind: Measuring the strength of consumers’ emotional attachments to brands. Journal of Consumer Psychology 15(1): 77–91.

    Google Scholar 

  • Verhoef, P.C. 2003. Understanding the effect of customer relationship management efforts on customer retention and customer share development. Journal of Marketing 67(4): 30–45.

    Google Scholar 

  • Worthington, S., R. Russell-Bennett, and C. Härtel. 2010. A tri-dimensional approach for auditing brand loyalty. Journal of Brand Management 17(4): 243–253.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zaichkowsky, J.L. 1985. Measuring the involvement construct. Journal of Consumer Research 12(3): 341–352.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zarantonello, L., and V. Pauwels-Delassus. 2016. The handbook of brand management scales. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Big Picture Partners, 504 Burson Place, Ann Arbor, MI, 48104, USA

    Marta Dapena-Baron

  2. Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, University of New Hampshire, 15 Academic Way, Durham, NH, 03824-2602, USA

    Thomas W. Gruen & Lin Guo

Authors
  1. Marta Dapena-Baron
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Thomas W. Gruen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Lin Guo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas W. Gruen.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appendix: Additional scale items included in survey along with the tripartite scale items

Appendix: Additional scale items included in survey along with the tripartite scale items

Switching index

  • 7-Point Likert scale, strongly disagree–strongly agree.

  • Switching away from <> will be an easy decision if something better becomes available.

  • If <> is not available, I will try something else.

  • If another brand comes up with an improved product, I will probably switch.

Involvement

The modified inventory contains multiple semantic differential items measured on a 7-point scale anchored by:

  • Important–unimportant.

  • Means a lot to me–means nothing to me.

  • Matters to me–does not matter.

  • Significant–insignificant.

  • Of no concern–of concern to me.

Overall loyalty

Scale adapted from Sirgy et al. 1991:

  1. (a)

    How often do you use <brand name>?

  2. (b)

    How often do you purchase <brand name>?

  3. (c)

    How loyal are you to <brand name>?

  4. (d)

    How does <brand name> compare to your ideal <product type>?

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Dapena-Baron, M., Gruen, T.W. & Guo, L. Heart, head, and hand: a tripartite conceptualization, operationalization, and examination of brand loyalty. J Brand Manag 27, 355–375 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41262-019-00185-3

Download citation

  • Revised:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41262-019-00185-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation