Brand loyalty is a twofold concept consisting of actual brand loyalty and repeat purchase behaviour. The latter only covers repeat purchases where the customer/ consumer buys a certain brand again for reasons of convenience or routine. Actual brand loyalty involves a psychological commitment to the brand in question. When measuring/ defining the level of brand loyalty, one should therefore not merely look at customers’ purchase behaviour, but also chart psychological drivers behind that behaviour.

The ACSI model is a measuring system that was developed to evaluate the performance of companies, industries, economic sectors and national economies. The model was designed for use in benchmark studies, and is also very apt as a customer satisfaction model.

Brand communities have been popping up all around us in recent years. These are often initiated by consumers, but brand owners themselves can also set up such communities. New research zooms in on the critical success factors of consumer-initiated vs. company-initiated communities. In the case of company-initiated communities it proved crucial to facilitate interaction between members and ‘reward’ members (by granting them certain privileges, for example).

The Brand Dynamics Pyramid devised by Dyson, Farr and Hollis is probably the brand loyalty model with the greatest quantity of research data to back it up. The authors first published this model in the Journal of Advertising Research (1996), and it was subsequently marketed by WPP as a measuring tool targeting powerful brands. This model distinguishes five different levels of brand loyalty in customers/ consumers. By offsetting scores against market averages, the relative strength of a brand can be identified relatively easily.

David Aaker identifies five levels of brand loyalty in his Brand Loyalty Pyramid: (1) switchers, (2) satisfied/ habitual buyers, (3) satisfied buyers with switching costs, (4) brand likers and (5) committed buyers. He describes the customer behaviour for each level, and pinpoints challenges faced by marketing professionals in their efforts to lift a customer/ consumer to a higher level. The greater the number of customers in the higher sections of the pyramid, the more effective the pursued branding policy.

One of the main objectives of brand communities is to create commitment in the core target group. The question three researchers asked themselves was whether a community feeling can also be triggered without there being direct interaction between group members. The results show that direct interaction between members is not necessary. Identification with the group turns out to suffice for the generation of a sense of community.

In his brand loyalty model, Jean-Noël Kapferer identifies three dimensions of brand loyalty: (1) brand preference, (2) single product repeat purchase and (3) trial of line or brand extensions. This model provides insight into three levels of brand loyalty, with brand preference being the lowest level and trial of line or brand extensions the highest.

Rossiter and Bellman distinguish thirteen different types of purchase behaviour, which they go on to classify in five main categories of brand loyalty: (1) brand loyals, (2) favourable brand switchers, (3) other-brand switchers, (4) other-brand loyals and (5) new-category users. In the appended PDF, this classification has been further fleshed out, accompanied by a concise measuring tool that can be used to class customers in these five loyalty levels.

Customer loyalty is often a good indicator of a company’s success. Research shows that many customers seem loyal to a certain company, but in actual fact not always are. Customers are sooner loyal to an employee or sales person than to the company itself. Greater insight into this ‘false loyalty’ is therefore required. These researchers argue that companies should develop strategies that stimulate both loyalty to the sales person and loyalty to the company.

Hofmeyr & Rice’s brand conversion model relates to brand loyalty. This model places consumers in eight groups on the basis of brand attitude and brand behaviour. These eight consumer groups are: (1) bonded, (2) loyals, (3) hesitants, (4) almost leavers, (5) availables, (6) doubters, (7) latents and (8) unreachables.

Brand owners often struggle with the question how they can win consumers' trust. They are always quick to consider issues like quality or, for example, the building of brand awareness through advertising. Reader’s Digest did research into this and found that there are significant differences between countries. Britons, for example, sooner take the advice of friends and family in their choice of cleaning product, while the Portuguese prefer to take the advice of an expert.