Influence Of Brand Loyalty On Consumer Behavior In The UK Fashion Industry

Research Rationale

Increasing competitive environment develops the endeavour of making strategies for the brand loyalty for both small and large business organisations. Brand loyalty is the aware and unaware decisions of the customers that are expressed through the intention to repurchase from the particular brands frequently (Sasmita and MohdSuki 2015). As stated by Lee et al. (2015), organisations use brand loyalty as the weapon of competition and brand loyalty helps to surpass the competitors with minimum costs. The business organisations can reach their short and long-term objectives with fewer efforts and lower costs in a shorter period of time (Cantallops and Salvi 2014). Brand loyalty for the particular product and service makes the consumers’ first choice to buy from the same brand. Brand loyalty occurs when the customers perceive that the brands offer the right features, level and image at the right price.

In the UK fashion industry, for the last five years; sales of the fashion brands have soared high. Sales of the online fashion clothing have increased by almost 24% in the last five years. Overall sales of fashion clothing in the UK are expected to grow by 15% in the next two years (Visitlondon.com 2018). Online fashion is the key term in the UK as it is expected to reach $29 billion in the year 2021 (Henninger et al. 2017). Young generation and the millennials like to purchase from the brands to which they are familiar. UK based fashion brands are Burberry, Stella McCartney, Paul Smith, Alexander McQueen, Temperley London, H&M and Zara. The fashion brands in the UK need to keep up the advertisements to let the customers know about the recent styles so that the customers become brand loyal. Therefore, the customers get to compare and contrast the different types of products and the services like discounts, free shipping and cost offered by the organisations.  

What is the issue?

Fashion brands need to make a good brand image and brand awareness so that the customer becomes loyal to the brands (Turker and Altuntas 2016). Lack of brand loyalty can negatively impact on the consumers’ buying behaviour.

Why is it an issue?

If the customers are not loyal to the brands, the customers may go to the different brands. Therefore, lack of loyal customers may hamper the revenue and profitability of the fashion brands.  

Why is it an issue now?

 In the fashion industry in the UK, the rise of online selling of the fashion brands has been increased. The customers are now exposed to many new fashion brands and the customers make a purchase from these brands as well (Battaglia et al. 2016). If the renowned fashion brands do not opt to take measure to make a brand image, the fashion brands tend to lose the competitive advantage and the existence of the brands will be threatened in the industry.

What does the research shed light on?

This research will shed light on the influence on brand loyalty on the consumers’ buying behaviour as this provides an advantage for the fashion brands to gain knowledge to heed on the consumers’ behaviour.  

Research Aim

The aim of the research is to explore the influence of brand loyalty on the consumers’ buying behaviour. This research aims to focus on the fashion brands of the UK.

The objectives of the research are:

• To explore the driving elements of brand loyalty in fashion industry
• To find out the factors regarding the consumers’ buying behaviour
• To highlight the influence of brand loyalty on the consumers’ behaviour in the fashion industry of the UK
• To recommend some possible solutions for developing the brand loyalty in the fashion brands of the UK to impact on consumers’ behaviour  

As stated by Lim et al. (2017), brand loyalty is the behaviour pattern of the customers when the customers become committed towards any particular brand and the customers make a purchase from the brands time and again. The authors further stated that the organisations make creative strategies so that the customers can be loyal towards the brands through rewards programme, brand ambassadors, trials and incentives. According to Pappu and Quester (2016), brand loyalty is based on the emotional dependence of the customers and it’s the reliance of the customers on the organisations to support, making decisions and guidance. The authors further stated that the emotional dependence of the customers is associated with the reliability, integrity, empathy and depth of the customers. In addition, brand loyalty is also based on the customer satisfaction as customer satisfaction is included with the delivery and the support of the products and services (Haryanto et al. 2016). Brand loyalty for particular services and products depends on the performance of the organisation. In fashion industry, the satisfaction of the customers regarding the accessories and the clothes is important along with the economic value proposition of the products.

In theory of Reasoned Action, the first part of the reasoned action is based on the element of persuasion and the behavioural intention. As stated by Montano and Kasprzyk (2015), the reasoned action is concerned with the behaviour of the customers and the influence of the people. Reasoned action describes the factors which limit the impact of the customers’ attitude on the behaviour.

Aaker Model of brand equity is based on the five categories which describe the brand’s liability and assets. As stated by Aaker (1991), brand loyalty assists the organisations to decrease the marketing costs and brand loyalty defines the brand equity also. In addition, brand loyalty cannot be imitated by the competitors and it gives time to the organisations to respond on move by the competitors. Brand awareness is the beginning of the brand equity and this awareness assists to get the consideration of the customers’ purchase.

According to Solomon et al. (2014), buying behaviour is the process of decision-making which is involved in purchasing and using of the products. The organisations need to understand why the customers make a purchase of the products and which factors trigger to purchase the products. As stated by Xiang et al. (2015), consumers’ behaviour means the reaction of the customers to the organisations’ marketing strategy which can impact on the firms’ success. Marketers of the organisations can predict how the customers can respond to marketing strategies (Cantallops and Salvi 2014). There are five stages in consumers’ buying behaviour process and it starts with problem recognition and the customers understand the actual state of desires. Then the customer’s search for the information and the information can be two types; internal search and external search. As stated by Ordun (2015), the customers need to create the criteria for the evaluation in the ‘evaluation of alternative’ where the customers evaluate the alternative in the industry. Then, the customers decided to purchase the products and in last stage, the post-purchase evaluation is made by the customers after an understanding of the after sales communication and warranties period.  

Research Objectives

It is the first choice of the consumer to purchase from the particular brand and it only occurs when the brand offers the perfect or right product features. Brand loyalty has some features which the organisations need to follow and these elements of brand loyalty are behavioural, biased, expressed and decision making of the customers. Customers can be loyal to a particular brand when there is a high switching cost or there can be economical, technical and psychological factors which make the process difficult (Haryanto et al. 2016). The customers can be brand loyal as it is associated with product quality, promotions of the organisations and the price of the actual products (Godey et al. 2016). In addition, as opined by Xiang et al. (2015), loyal customers love the brand because it raises positive emotions in them as they have a positive experience with it.

H₁: Brand loyalty positively influences the consumer buying behaviour

H₀: Brand loyalty does not positively influence customer buying behaviour

Research philosophy conceptualises the source of the knowledge in a research and it facilities the process in which data about the subject matter must be collected, gathered and utilised. As stated by Hughes and Sharrock (2016), research philosophy is the idea of knowledge which helps to formulate assumptions and beliefs. Research philosophy helps to reflect the researcher’s assumptions on the given topic. There are mainly three types of research philosophy, realism, positivism and interpretivism.

Justification for selecting positivism philosophy

In this research, the positivism research philosophy will be selected by the researcher. Positivism research philosophy adheres to mainly factual data gathered through observation. Positivism philosophy helps to collect data from the scientific way and the role of the researcher is to collect the data and interpret in an objective way Levine et al. (2018). In this research, the subject area is consumer behaviour and brand loyalty; the researcher will get help in getting the quantifiable observation which will help the researcher to do the statistical analysis. In addition, positivism research philosophy maintains the minimal interaction with the research participants as the research will be done based on the primary data for consumer buying behaviour regarding fashion brands.

Research logic is a procedure which consists of the assumptions to get the detailed method of collecting the data (Taylor et al. 2015). Research logic is of two type; deductive research logic and inductive research logic. Inductive approach begins with concepts and observation which are conceptualised to the end of research collection as the outcome of the observation (Glaser 2016). On the other side, deductive approach is about developing the hypothesis based on existing theories and concept and it helps to design the research strategy to test the hypothesis (Pearl 2014).

Justification of selecting deductive logic

In this research, the researcher will select deductive research logic. Deductive research logic is mainly concerned with generating the hypothesis based on the existing concept of the research. The researcher will get a large amount of data based on the brand loyalty and consumer’s buying behaviour. Deductive research logic means reasoning from the particular to the general (Mackey and Gass 2015). Deductive logic is tested as per the observation of the participants of the research. In this subjective area, an abundance of sources is available and the researcher has a short time available to complete the study. Deductive research logic lastly confirms or rejects the hypothesis based on the research findings of brand loyalty and consumer buying behaviour.

Concept of Brand Loyalty

As stated by Palinkas et al. (2015), the research approach can be defined as the plan to collect, interpret and analysis of the data. The researcher can take either a qualitative research approach or quantitative research approach.Qualitative research is mainly exploratory research and it is utilised to understand the understanding of underlying motivations, opinions and reasons (Lewsi 2015). Qualitative data are subjective and based on observations. The researcher will take the quantitative research approach within the scientific paradigm. The scientific method of doing the research is to postulate the hypothesis (Smith 2015). The researcher may find that there are many theories which have already been explained brand loyalty and customer buying behaviour. The main advantage of the quantitative research approach is that this methodical will allow the researcher to have greater flexibility of collecting the data in statistical data collection than the qualitative research.

The researchers can use mostly primary and secondary data collection process. Secondary data is dealt with the secondary data sources which are based on the books, journals, online articles, websites, government reports and internet sources. On the contrary, primary data are collected from respondents and primary data are updated and recent data. Primary data provides the opportunity to collect the data directly from the respondents considering the viewpoints of the research topic. As stated by Silverman (2018), primary data are relevant and original to the topic and primary data has more accuracy than the secondary data.

The researcher will collect primary data in order to continue the research. The researcher will conduct a survey to collect the primary data. The data collection instrument will be a questionnaire. The researcher will prepare 12 close-ended multiple choice questions. The researcher will segregate the survey questions into two parts, demographic questionnaire and the subjective questionnaire. The researcher will collect the data from the customers of the fashion brands aged between 18 and 35. The sample size of the research will be kept as 100. The researcher will collect the sample using Facebook as the researcher has already found a Facebook Group where the members of the group always discuss the new shopping experience. The researcher will ask the Group admin about the survey and the researcher will take permission from the member to use their e-mail ids to send the survey questionnaire. The researcher will provide 10 days to revert on the e-mail questionnaire. The researcher will use simple random sampling as it is part of population from which each of the sample members has the equal chance of being selected as the respondents.The researcher will get the advantage of representing the target population and eliminate the sampling bias from simple random sampling.

Table 1: Sampling of the research

(Source: Developed by the researcher)

The researcher will use quantitative data analysis technique in order to analyse collected survey data. Quantitative data are mainly numerical data (Wickham 2016). The researcher will use the mean, median and standard deviation to present the data findings. In addition, the researcher will also use SPSS software 2.0 to perform the advanced statistical analysis. SPSS helps to set the correlation between two variables (independent and dependent). SPSS will help in the analysis of highly complex data analysis and manipulation.

Theoretical Concept of Brand Loyalty

The limitation and challenges encountered by the researcher would be based mainly using methodological tools. The researcher may face challenges regarding the collection of primary data as the researcher has to conduct survey and survey has a lack of surety. The researcher cannot be sure that how many responses he can gather after the survey process of doing. The researcher may face the limitation on handling a large amount of data gathered from the 100 respondents. The survey will provide only close-ended options and the respondents will fail to express the real perspective. In addition, the researcher may face a budgetary constraint as the researcher cannot take help from the exclusive articles which have to download via paying dollars.

The research is associated with the human participants; therefore, the researcher will take permission from the respondents. The researcher will prepare a consent form in which each of the respondents has to sign it. The researcher will adhere to the Data Protection Act 1998. The researcher will maintain the confidentiality and the researcher will not share the names of the respondents. It is very significant that the researcher must not force the respondents to provide their opinion (Wachter et al. 2017). The researcher will destroy all the data once the research process is done. The researcher will not perform any coercion during the research process or any kind of exchange of money will not occur during the research process. The researcher will collect only authentic data sources.

Table 2: Gantt chart

(Source: Created by the author)

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