Persistent Preferences in Market Place Choices: Brand Loyalty, Choice Inertia, and Something in Between

Abstract

An important marketing objective by which a firm obtains sustainable competitive advantage is to create and harness customer loyalty for its brands. A high degree of consumer loyalty is probably the greatest asset marketers can possess. While there are several reasons for being loyal to a brand, I believe that in the past two decades undue emphasis has been given to the person-brand relationship and related constructs such as self-brand connections and commitment based on emotional attachment. In this review, I have highlighted other major reasons behind loyalty. I use a milder term — persistent preference — to highlight that a major subset of repeat purchase behavior is not characterized by a high degree of emotional content. Nonetheless, for many forms of challenges by competitors, this subset may show more or less the same consequences that are normally attributed to loyalty with heavy emotional content. I review classic and more recent research on brand loyalty and attitudinal resistance, and research on persistence from a behavioral decision theory perspective. Based on this review, I identify four types of persistent preferences and describe their characteristics.

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