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Title: Predicting Brand Loyalty and Product Involvement Behavior of IndianTeenagers Incorporating the Moderating Effect of Brand Influence Score.

Dipak Saha* , Debasis Bhattacharya** & Shuvendu Dey***

Creating and maintaining strong brand and a band wagon of loyal customers have becomeincreasingly difficult in today's competitive environment due to proliferation of numerous brands in ageneric product category. Brand loyalty has been shown to be associated with higher rates of returnon investment due to increase in the market share. Though several facets brand loyalty, recent studiesreveal that involvement plays an important role in predicting brand loyalty of consumers. Theresearchers have established the relationship between involvement and brand loyalty. Past studies inthis area reveal the dependence of researchers to administer the scale developed by Kapferer andLaurent as well as the scale developed by Zaichkowsky to capture product involvement facet. Thebrand loyalty scale developed by Dick and Basu are commonly applied in marketing literature.According to a recent estimate, teenagers kids from the age of 13to 19spent over $150 billion peryear globally. They also influence an additional spending of $150 billion per year globally throughpester power. Purchase of another $300 billion goods and services per year takes place because ofthe influence exerted by the teenagers. Studies reveal that teenagers in India spend more than Rs

66000 million in a year only on clothing items. As such, the teenage customers in India have emergedas big spenders having increasing purchasing power as well as increasing pester power. In thisbackground, it is imperative to study the brand loyalty and product involvement behavior of teenagers.In our paper we have included brand influence score, brand trust and the size of the consideration setthat might influence brand loyalty of teens. This paper is a sincere endeavor to gain an insight into thedecision making process and the driving factors that influence teenage buying behavior by measuringthe brand influence scores (BIS) for different products thereby helping marketers to formulateproactive marketing and selling strategies to survive in the turbulent marketing environment asteenagers today become the buyers of tomorrow. Astonishingly, very few studies have beenundertaken to relate the brand loyalty and product involvement behavior of teenagers. The data forthis study is gathered from a cross section of teenagers drawn from different socioeconomicbackgrounds from the major metros of India. Factor analysis, multivariate regression procedures havebeen employed to draw managerial inferences.

Key words: Brand Loyalty; Product Involvement; Indian Teens; Brand Influence Score.

Field of Research: Marketing.

1.1 Introduction

Teenagers in the contemporary marketing environment constitute a pivotal market segment anddeserve considerable attention from marketers and academicians due to the fact that the marketis expanding and the teens spend vast amount of money for a wide variety of products. It is areality that the children play a central role in influencing family purchasing decisions that has

urged the marketing researchers to track their brand influencing behavior. It can hardly bedenied that the degree of influence exerted by children differ across product categories as wellas the stage of the decision making process. The teenage population is increasing exponentiallyover the last decade and for this reason the consumer behavior researchers are showingenormous interest to unveil the buying behavior of this growing segment.

The Indian consumer market, which is primarily dominated by young generation, is becomingincreasingly sophisticated and brand conscious. A typical upper middle class young consumer isbeginning to look beyond the utility aspect of a product to seek intangibles like brand and

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lifestyle statement associated with the product. This modern consumer wants his purchases toreflect his lifestyle or at least the one he aspires for. As a result of this brand consciousness, thefood and beverage segment of the FMCG sector is already witnessing a significant shift indemand from loose to branded products.

India alone is home to 1.136 billion people, out of which an estimated 350 million are in the agebracket of 10-24 years. Their purchasing power has significantly increased, both, in terms ofsalary and pocket money. An ASSOCHAM survey revealed that the average monthly allowanceof urban children in the age group of 10-17 years has gone up from 300 in 1998 to 1,300 in2008. This segment is very attractive due to its size, increasing spending power, and largeexposure to media. Among the existing studies, there is none in our knowledge that documentsbrand relationships of young consumers in an emerging economy. Finally, young consumers theworld over are influenced by peers and family in their brand-related decisions (Singh, Kwon andPereira, 2003). For marketers, it is important to understand the impact of these factors on brandrelationships and brand switching intentions.Teenagers who are belonging to the age group of 13 to 19 approximately spend $150 billion peryear globally. Teens also exert influence to the tune of an additional $150 billion per yearglobally with pester power. It is believed from various sources that they indirectly influenceanother $300 billion per year. Thats a total purchasing/influencing power of $600 billion this

year. Moreover, teens are to a considerable extent influence various products to be consumedand used by their parents and other members of their family to which they belong.

The world is witnessing a rise in the number of young consumers and evidence suggests theyare brand conscious. In addition, 57 per cent of the teenagers cite marketing and media in theirconversations as compared to 48 per cent adults (Hein, 2007). Teenagers share of expenditurein the Indian market is worth $2.8 billion (Rana, 2007); young consumers tend to be moreinvolved with material possessions (Belk, 1988). Consumer socialization process begins athome; young consumers see brands which are consumed in the family and are likely to give firstpreference to the use and purchase of those brands. Even though young consumers startconsuming and developing relationships with the new brands they get exposed to, the impact of

the brand exposure from their families is likely to be strong. In the Indian context, family hastraditionally played a strong role in influencing choices of their progeny. Bravo, Fraj and Martinez(2007) argue that family always provides suggestions regarding brands for young consumers.The greater the families influence on brand choice, the lower the depth of brand relationship.(Sahay and Sharma, 2010).

Todays teenage customers have emerged as big-time spenders, who not only have a goodamount of pocket money but also know how to supplement the same by means of internships,summer jobs, part-time jobs. It can hardly be denied that the teenage market in India is growingat a fast pace and it is a quite sizable market segment which the marketers cannot ignore. Somestudies have been undertaken to relate the brand loyalty and product involvement of consumers

in the recent past, no systematic effort has been made to study the loyalty behaviour of teenageconsumers for a cross section of FMCG and durable products which are primary targeted to thissegments. Bearing in mind a research gap in his area, in this paper an effort is made to discernthe involvement and loyalty behaviour of teenagers in India.

1.2 Need for the StudyThere is a voluminous literature dedicated to the study of the concept of brand loyalty. However,most of the research works carried out in this area has focused on the Indian consumers, andstudies involving the Indian teenage consumers are quite less in number. It is high time that

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research pertaining to loyalty involving Indian teenage consumers is strongly encouraged,because the outcome of any such research work would help the corporate to implementinnovative changes in their product portfolio and thereby retain the customers.Entry of multinationals and their aggressive way of garnering market share results in sleeplessnights of brand executives. Research pertaining to loyalty involving Indian consumers is theneed of the hour, because the outcome of any such research work would help the corporate toimplement innovative changes in their product portfolio and thereby retain the customers.Significant increase in the spending power of Indian Teenagers and their desire to purchasesophisticated products are changing day by day. Availability of more number of multinationalbrands with unique attributes has forced the oscillating consumers to buy new brands...

Another major consideration for the marketer is to look at the issue of teenagers brand loyaltyfrom the perspective of teenagers level of involvement. The findings of various studies (Laurentand Kapferer, 1985; Bordo, 1993; Leclerc and Little, 1997) indicate a positive relationshipbetween these two dimensions. However, since the pattern of Indian teenagers' involvement hasnot been fully explored, a study is required to examine the relative influence the antecedents ofteenage involvement on brand loyalty.

1.3 Objectives of the Study:

The Present is conducted keeping in view the following objectives:i) To determine the level of involvement of teens with respect to various brands included inour study and the number of brands in the consideration set.

ii) To determine the brand loyalty score for the products considered in our study.iii) To examine the Brand Influence Score (BIS) of teens by developing a seven point Likert

scale.iv) To investigate the predictive ability of various explanatory variables in explaining brand

loyalty.v) To integrate the findings above and suggest possible managerial implications.

1.4 Review of Literature :The concept of involvement has received much attention in social psychology and, morerecently, in marketing to study consumer behaviour. Involvement theory, as it has come to beknown, is based on hemispheral lateralization, or right-and-left brain information processing.Based on the notion of hemispheral lateralization, Krugman (1965) theorized that individualspassively process and store right brain (i.e. non-verbal, pictorial, holistic) information withoutactive involvement. Since T.V. is primarily a visual medium, T.V. viewing is regarded a rightbrain activity and T.V. itself is therefore considered as a low involvement medium. Cognitiveinformation, on the other hand, is processed by the left side of the brain and as such, print mediaare considered as high involvement media.Once high and low involvement media was conceptualized on the notion of hemispheral

lateralization, the involvement theorists then focused on the consumers involvement withdifferent product categories and purchase situations. It is postulated that since there are highand low involvement buyers; there are high and low involvement purchase situations as well.High involvement purchases are those that are very important to the consumers in terms ofperceived risk and urge consumers to engage in extensive problem solving. When consumershave no established criteria for evaluating a product category or specific brands in that category,their decision efforts can be termed as extensive problem solving. At this level, the buyer needsa great deal of information to establish a set of criteria on which the competing brands areevaluated.

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For example, an I-pod and a shampoo (though financial stake is very low) may both representhigh involvement purchase situations, the I-pod because of greater perceived financialcommitment, the shampoo because of high perceived social risk. Low involvement purchases,on the other side, are purchases that are not very important to the consumer because of verylittle perceived risk and buyers generally do not pass through all the stages of the buyingdecision making process.Zaichkowsky (1985, 1986 & 1994) defines involvement as a persons perceived relevance of theobject based on inherent needs, values and interests. Another distinction is postulated by thepractitioners tendency to speak of emotional involvement (Vaughn, 1980). Vaughn suggested anew FCB approach and developed a matrix to classify products and services usingthinking/feeling a high/low involvement as two dimensions for this new FCB strategy model.It is now evident from the above discussion that the measurement of involvement varied greatly.Researchers who believe involvement as a cognitive state are concerned with the measurementof ego involvement, risk perception and importance of the purchase. On the other hands,researchers who focus on the behavioural aspects of involvement measure such factors as thesearch for and evaluation of product information.Kapferer and Laurent (1985a, 1985b, and 1993) stressed that since there are so many kinds ofconsumer involvement, efforts should be undertaken to measure an involvement profile ratherthan a single involvement index. They have suggested five important facets to measure

involvement profile of an individual. These facets are interest in the product, the perceivedpleasure, the risk associated with the purchase, the probability of making a poor choice and thesign or symbolic value associated with the product. Their findings are consistent with theprevious studies which argue that of two mutually exclusive categories of high and lowinvolvement.

A substantial research work in the field of involvement have been taken to relate the brandloyalty and commitment behaviour of consumers particularly after two articles published in the

journal of marketing and the journal of marketing research by Laurent & Kapferer ( 1985a ,1985b).However , Taylor ( 1991) has probably examined initially the relationship betweenproduct involvement and brand commitment. Since then a plethora of research articles have

been published to relate involvement variables and brand loyalty behavior of consumers for awide variety of product and services.

Brand loyalty: An Overview

Brand loyalty exists when a purchaser makes the choice of favoring one brand from a set ofsubstitutes, consistently over a phase of time. In traditional logic, brand loyalty refers to recurringpurchase behaviour or the predisposition to purchase a brand again or the result of cognitiveaction and decision making (Mittal and Myung, 1988). Brand loyalty, the final objective ofbranding, is the situation where in customers has a propensity not to consider other brandsduring the decision process (Jones et al, 2002). Brand loyalty is the result of far-reachingcognitive action and decision making and it is a form of repeat purchasing behaviour reflecting aconscious decision to continue favoring the same brand. Dick and Basu (1994) posit that truebrand loyalty exists when customers have a high relative attitude towards the brand, which isthen exhibited through repurchase intentions. A Few researchers in the field of consumerbehavior view that loyalty is a process of repurchasing which happens due to situationalrestrictions, lack of feasible alternatives or out of expediency (Bandyopadhyay et al, 2005; Aydinand Gokhan, 2005; Argawal and Malhotra, 2005 , Sadasivan , K , et al.2011)

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Disk & Bases (1999) conceptualization of the brand loyalty concept is frequently applied byresearchers to capture the brand loyalty construct. Dick and Basu with due theoretical researchpropose a brand loyalty scale that includes cognitive, affective and conative dimension.Cognitive LoyaltyDick and Basu (1994) suggest that brand affect addresses the emotional aspect of brand loyaltybut cognitive loyalty is more rational. They view that cognitive loyalty consists of four facts;accessibility, confidence, centrality and clarity. Accessibility is the ease with which an attitudecan be retrieved from the memory. On the other hand attitudinal confidence is the level ofcertainty with an attitude or evaluation. The strength to which an attitude towards a brand isrelated to the value system of a consumer indicates its centrality and an attitude is well definedwhen a buyer perceives alternative attitude to a brand objectionable.Affective LoyaltyChowdhury and Holbrook (2002) define brand affect as The potential in a brand to elicit apositive emotional response in the average consumer as a result of its use . The strength ofrelationship between a brand and its buyers depends to a considerable extent by the magnitudeof positive affect generated by that brand. A high level of commitment toward a brand is affectedby positive affective responses.Conative / Behavioural LoyaltyDick and Basu (1994) describe conation as behavioural decomposition. The defining element is

the behaviour loyalty is the buyers over purchase behaviour of a particular brand from amongsta large number of competing brands. Dick and Basu suggest that antecedents consumer loyaltystem from three distinct dimensions of loyalty viz. affective, cognitive and conative componentsof attitudes.Highly loyal people tend to exhibit high levels of involvement and that individual, social, andsituational factors, such as personal values or beliefs, social and cultural norm, influencebehavioural loyalty as suggested by Iwasaki and Havitz (1998). Odin et al., in 2001 points outthat an advantage of the behavioural loyalty is that it measures observable behaviours, insteadof (self-reported) intentions and declarations. It is also easier and cheaper to measure (Dekimpeet al., 1997).Involvement Profile

It is evident from the foregoing discussion that the measurement of involvement variedgreatly. Researchers who believe involvement as a cognitive state are concerned with themeasurement of ego involvement, risk perception and importance of the purchase. On the otherhand, researchers who focus on the behavioural aspects of involvement measure such factorsas the search for information and evaluation of product. Kapferer and Laurent (1985a, 1985b, and 1993) stressed that since there are so manykinds of consumer involvement, efforts should be undertaken to measure an involvement profilerather than a single index of involvement. They have suggested five important facets to measureinvolvement profile of an individual consumer. These facets or dimensions are:

I) Interest (The personal interest a person has in a product category).ii) Pleasure (the hedonic value of the product).

iii) Risk Importance (the perceived importance of the potential negative consequencesassociated with a poor choice of the product).iv) Risk Probability (the perceived probability of making such a poor choice).v) Sign Value (the degree to which it expresses the person's self).

The link between product involvement and brand loyalty is found to involve different aspects ofinvolvement for each of the products concerned explains Quester and Lim (2003) in an empiricalexamination. Knox and David (2003) suggest a research design that tries to integrate priortheory on involvement and brand loyalty in a grocery product purchasing. Their main findingestablishes that in grocery markets there is a significant relationship between involvement and

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brand loyalty. Yi-Youjae and Hoseong (2003) confirm that customer loyalty was highly affectedby involvement when organized a research to find out the moderating role of involvement onloyalty program.Product involvement is a consumer defined concept as opposed to product defined (Martin,1998) and is essentially a consumer response to the product. involvement should not beconsidered, nor measured, as a unidimensional construct argues Kapferer & Laurent (1993). Onthe other hand, they suggest measuring it through a Consumer Involvement Profile (CIP), anempirical instrument comprising several subscales, each one measuring a different antecedentof involvement. Each subscale should measure a different antecedent of involvement whichprovides the justification for using a set of subscales, rather than a single unidimensional scale.

A four faceted Consumer Involvement Profile (CIP) as a way of operationalizing consumers'involvement in products was proposed by Laurent and Kapferer in 1985. They advocated theavoidance of current practice measures involvement by a single index, or even a single item ofproduct's perceived importance. Instead, logically a profile of the dimensions of interest,perceived risk, pleasure values and sign value needs to be kept in mind.Consideration set is the subset of brands that consumers evaluate when making a purchasedecision. A consumer has a limited information processing abilities and limits the comparison toa subset of brands that is termed as consideration set.Brand trust

Despite tremendous interest drawn by trust concept from practitioners and marketing literature,there has been little scholarly research that has explicitly examined this concept in theconsumer-brand domain. Due to the non-existence of widely used and accepted measures ofbrand trust, this research represents one of only a few theoretical and empirical examinations ofthis concept. More specifically, it has sought to address this void by (1) developing a multi-itemmeasure of brand trust, (2) assessing its psychometric properties, and (3) investigating itsrelational linkage with other theoretically related constructs such as satisfaction and brandloyalty. Based on the literature review conducted, we have conceptualized brand trust as afeeling of security held by the consumer in his/her interaction with the brand, that it is based onthe perceptions that the brand, as a personified entity, is reliable and responsible for the

interests and welfare of the consumer... Trust is viewed as a central variable to the developmentof brand loyalty (Fournier 1995; Garbarino and Johnson 1999; Morgan and Hunt 1994), due tothe conceptual connections of relationship aspects to the notion of loyalty itself (Fournier andYao1997; Sheth and Parvatiyar 1995). Therefore, the development of a brand trust scalebreathes new theoretical perspectives into brand loyalty research because it would help toprovide a wider understanding and explanation of this particular aspect of consumer behavior.

As pointed out by Garbarino and Johnson (1999), for decades one of the key global constructspredicting consumer behavior has been overall satisfaction (Anderson and Sullivan 1993;Bloemer and Kasper 1995; Cronin and Taylor 1992; LaBarbera and Marzusky 1983; Oliver1980).

1.5 Hypotheses:Based on the review of literature and the objectives of the study mentioned above, the following

hypotheses have been framed:H1: Antecedents of Product Involvement are positively associated with brand loyalty behaviourof TeenagersH2: The Brand Influence Score of Teens and Brand Loyalty are positively associatedH3: The higher the number of brands in the Consideration Set, the lower would be the BandLoyalty

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H4: The Brand Trust is positively associated with Brand Loyalty

1.6 Methodology:

Since the objective of our study is to relate the teenage involvement and brand loyalty behaviourincorporating the brand influence score and the number of brands in the consideration set, wehave employed factor analysis to establish scale dimensionality. In addition to this, multiple

regression analysis is employed to assess the importance of different variables in predicting thebrand loyalty of teenagers considered in our study. Regression analysis is also employed toascertain the predictive validity of the proposed measure of involvement and brand loyalty. Theconstruct involvement is measured using a twelve item multi-dimensional scale incorporating riskprobability, risk importance, pleasure value and the Sign Value. In our study , we have alsomeasured involvement using a five item five-point scale derived from the scale proposed byZaichkowsky ( 1995) to compare whether the uni-dimensional or multi-dimensional measure ofinvolvement predict brand loyalty behaviour of teenagers. Highly involved consumers find fewerbrands acceptable (narrow categorizers) and tend to be more loyal. On the other hand brandswitchers are likely to have more brands in their consideration set (broad categorizers) that arelikely to be less loyal to their brands. In an attempt to establish this phenomenon we have

gathered data from teenagers regarding the number of brand they have in their considerationset. Teenagers play a significant role in deciding the brands they purchase for themselves aswell as they shape the brand choice behaviour for other brands purchased for familyconsumption which are technically known as pester power. In our study, we have developed aseven item five point scale to measure the Brand Influence Score (BIS) of teenagers which islikely to influence the brand loyalty of teenagers. The detailed methodological proceduresfollowed in our study are briefly discussed in the subsequent sections:Scale Development

While developing the scale to measure the involvement construct, we have followed therecommended scaling procedures which are very commonly found in psychometric literature

(Nunnally, 1978). Following Churchill's (1979) suggestion, we generated a pool of items for eachfacets from different involvement scales developed by Laurent and Kapferer (1995b), Jain andSrinivasan (1990), Lastovicka and Gardner (1979), Traylor and Joseph (1984) and Zaichkowsky(1985). In addition to the above, a preliminary in-depth discussion with a sample of respondents(n=21) pursuing management programme was also an important source from which wegenerated a few other items.

Altogether, 28 five point semantic differential items were initially developed to reflect the fourfacets of involvement. These items were then judged for content validity by a small panel ofexperts (n=3) resulting in 17 semantic differential statements. The panel comprised of bothacademicians and marketing professional is having adequate knowledge in this field. These 17items were then administered to an initial sample of post-graduate University (n=42) studentsover two products categories per student.

At item to total correlation technique has been employed as the measure of the index of itemdiscrimination. When the correlation between the total score and the individual items score iscomputed as a measure of the discriminative power of the item, it shows how well the item ismeasuring the function which the test itself is measuring. Following suggestions of Zaichkowsky(1985) and Gaski and Etzel (1986) statements with items to total correlation (within eachcomponent) of r = 0.50 or more were retained. In this process five more items were dropped andfinally 12 items were retained to measure 4 facets of involvement. After initial purification, the

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final version of the involvement scale needs to be examined again for reliability and constructvalidity over several samples for different product categories.

1.7 Data and Sample Demographics:Data for the survey are obtained from a convenience sample of teens drawn from the four majormetros in India. In addition to meeting the socio-demographic criteria, the choice of theconvenience sample is made so that the teenagers have to be a user of the product on which

their responses are sought. For an individual researcher convenience sample is suitable forsome reasons discussed below.Due to financial constraint, it is not feasible for us to adopt a probability sampling technique.

Another problem very unique to our country is that respondents do not seriously co-operate withthe researchers and either try to escape interview or give very casual response. Conveniencesample, though not very scientific, helps in getting over this limitation. Moreover, since ourobjective is to determine the degree and direction of relationship between various facets ofinvolvement and their influence on the teenagers loyalty behavioural aspect and nogeneralizations about the sample teenagers are envisaged, a convenience sample is consideredadequate for this study.It should be reiterated that since our objective of the study is to unveil the involvement profiles ofteenagers across the major metros. The data are collected by investigators who were presentthroughout the administration phase and ensured that the various involvement facets, differentattitude scales, and meaning of the variables measured are understood clearly by therespondents before giving their responses. A profile of teenage respondents considered in ourstudy is presented in Appendix V

Selection of Stimulus ProductsIn our present study, a good deal of exploratory work is needed to select the products to

be included in the study. While selecting the stimulus products for the study we have to resolvesome important issues. First, the individual considered for the interview has a user of theproducts for which his response is sought. Secondly, products are deliberately chosen torepresent contrasting profiles on various dimensions of involvement viz. risk, pleasure and sign(self expression factor) associated with the product.

The final list of products retained for this study is done through a series of qualitative in-depth interviews with the teenagers... The respondents are first informed about the purpose ofthe survey and they are asked to name a few typical products that come to their mind among afew categories of products (viz. durable and convenience items).

The responses of consumers in most of the occasions reveal that Cell phone; Deodorant, Chips,Toothpaste, Ball Pen, Two Wheeler, etc. are frequently used by the teenagers. We have notconsidered those products which presumably were high or low on all facets since inclusion ofthese products would prevent the facets from appearing distinct. The final lists of productsincluded in our survey are: (1) Cell phone, (2) Deodorant, (3) Chips and (4) Toothpaste. Twowheeler is excluded from our study since a very few respondents possess two wheeler sincelicense to ride two wheeler is issued after completing eighteen years of age. Again, Ball pen isexcluded from our study due to huge number of national and regional brands available in themarket and they do not even remember the names of the brand they use particularly for the useand throw brands. For other brands the respondents mostly reveal that while refilling thecartridge they depend on the discretion of the shop owners.

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Psychometric Performance of the Scale

The twelve-item involvement scale was initially administered to a sample of studentsenrolled in the Department of Commerce of North Bengal University to assess the reliability andvalidity of the proposed measure where each student had to give response on two productcategories. We have computed internal consistency reliability by Cronbach's alpha as well as bytest-retest reliability. It is quite evident from the table that the reliability coefficients arereasonably high and it can be concluded that the scale which we intend to use in our studypossesses sufficient degree of internal consistency despite a small number of items in eachscale. It has to be remembered that consistency is a necessary but not sufficient condition forvalidity (Nunnally, 1978). Therefore, in the subsequent discussion we address this importantissue in detail.

The assessment here will begin with construct validity, which refers to the extent to whichthe hypothetical, unobservable construct of interest correspond to the purported measure of it(Peter, 1981). In order for a measure to have construct validity, each of the measurement itemsmust relate to the characteristics of the construct, and each item must be free fromcontamination by elements of other constructs. These two requirements are operationalised by

two validity tests, viz. (a) Content Validity and (b) Scale Dimensionality. These two issues arebriefly addressed below:

(a) Content Validity:

When a test is constructed so that its content of term measures what the whole testclaims to measure, the test is said to have content or circular validity... It was done essentially bya systematic examination of the items included by researchers while capturing the domain of theconstruct. In addition to this, initial scale items (17 pairs) were judged' by a small sample ofexperts who expressed that these items could be used to capture the domain of the construct.Moreover, statistical tests also have been applied to ensure content validity. In our study, the

level of internal consistency measured by Cronbach's alpha provided sufficient evidence for thecontent validity.

(b) Scale Dimensionality:

The scale dimensionality may be reviewed via factor analysis which is a collection ofmathematical procedures for determining which variables belong to which factor or underlyingconstruct. Through factor analysis, specific expectations concerning the number of factors andtheir loadings are tested on sample data. Campbell (1960) and Nunnally (1978) suggest thateach scale should measure a single facet if it is considered to have construct validity.

Discriminant validity, on the other hand, represents the distinctiveness of each scale vis--visothers. To test simultaneously construct and discriminant validity, we conducted a factor analysisof the items using student samples for two different product categories.

As recommended by Laurent and Kapferer (1985a), an oblique rotation (Direct ObliminMethod) was utilized because there is not a priori expectation that the four antecedents ofinvolvement are mutually independent. The involvement scale designed to tap differentdimensions of the construct should not be expected a priori to be orthogonal and for this we didnot apply the Varimax rotation procedure.

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With a few notable exceptions, the scale items loaded on the factors they were supposedto measure. Apart from this, for other applications, factor analysis led to the results we expectedone factor per item, all items from an antecedent on the same factor, one factor per antecedent.

The results of factor analysis presented in Tables-I and Table - II, amply demonstratethat the proposed measure is not contaminated with elements from the domain of otherconstructs or error. The systematic extraction of four factors can be interpreted as supportiveevidence of construct validity.

Table-1: Factor Analysis ResultsProduct: Cell Phone (N=82)

Items F1 F2 F3 F4

PROB1 .307 .324 .791

PROB2 .803

PROB3 .310 .849 .722

PLSR1 .342 .740

PLSR2 .320 .749

PLSR3

RIMP1 .857

RIMP2 .831 .300

RIMP3 .834

SEXP1 .863

SEXP2 .766 .317

SEXP3 .711 .067 .427 .427

Eigen Value 3.47 1.95 1.72 1.05

% of Variance 28.9 16.3 14.3 8.8Loadings above 0.30 are reported.

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Table-1I: Factor Analysis ResultsProduct: Deodorant (N=73)

Items F1 F2 F3 F4

PROB1 .336 -.649

PROB2 -.812

PROB3 .374 -.746

PLSR1 .713 .320

PLSR2 .703

PLSR3 .786

RIMP1 .779

RIMP2 .382 .626

RIMP3 .701

SEXP1 .684

SEXP2 .593 .488

SEXP3.767

Eigen Value 2.41 2.02 1.57 1.23

% of Variance 20.1 16.9 13.2 10.3

Loadings above 0.30 are reported.

1.7 Results and Discussion:

The regression analysis using the multi-dimensional measurement of involvement for deodorantis presented in Table III. The value of adjusted R Square is quite high indicating strong

goodness of fit and the F value is significant beyond p< .000 indicating a significant associationbetween the explanatory variables and the dependent variables (Brand Loyalty). If we considerthe coefficients, it is evident that the sign value, consideration set, risk importance are highlysignificant in influencing the brand loyalty for deodorant. The pleasure facet also positivelyinfluences the brand loyalty significantly. It is surprising to note that the brand influence score isnot highly significant though the relationship is found to be positive indicating the fact thatteenagers influence the purchase of deodorant for their consumption or consumption by theother members of the family. As hypothesized, the higher the number of brands in theconsideration set, the lesser is the brand loyalty and the coefficient if found to be negative. Therisk probability dimension for product Deodorant is not found to be statistically significantprobably due to the reason that the respondents are predisposed to a particular brand and

hence do not feel confused in selecting the brand they prefer. The sign value is highly significantbecause it gives the teenagers a feeling of psychological satisfaction to express their lifestyle byfavoring an established brand having positive brand image.

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Multi-dimensional MeasurementTable - III

Regression CoefficientsProduct: Deodorant

VariablesUnstandardized Coefficients

StandardizedCoefficients

t Sig.B Std. Error Beta

Risk Probability .228 .191 .063 1.191 .238

Sign 1.612 .177 .604 9.096 .000

Pleasure .361 .147 .137 2.452 .017

Risk Importance .457 .160 .162 2.858 .006

Brand InfluenceScore

.144 .079 .102 1.827 .072

Consideration Set -1.017 .358 -.181 -2.840 .006

Dependent Variable: Brand LoyaltyAdjusted R Square: .799, F: 62.201, P

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Table - IVRegression Coefficients: Product: Cell phone

Variables Unstandardized CoefficientsStandardizedCoefficients t Sig.

B Std. Error Beta

Sign .494 .182 .233 2.717 .008

Pleasure 1.008 .226 .464 4.450 .000

Risk importance .016 .157 .009 .099 .921

Risk Probability -.007 .158 -.004 -.045 .964

Brand InfluenceScore

.136 .087 .129 1.552 .125

Consideration Set -1.397 .576 -.218 -2.424 .018

Dependent Variable: Brand LoyaltyNote: Adjusted R Square 0.517, F: 14.730, P < .000

Uni-dimensional measure

Table - VRegression Coefficients: Product: Cell Phone

Variables

UnstandardizedCoefficients

StandardizedCoefficients t Sig.

B Std. Error Beta

Involvement .651 .238 .317 2.734 .008

Brand Trust .371 .170 .247 2.191 .033

Brand InfluenceScore

.235 .097 .282 2.420 .019

Consideration Set -1.443 .835 -.195 -1.728 .090Dependent Variable: Brand LoyaltyNote: Adjusted R Square: 0.296: F: 7.210, P

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Variables

UnstandardizedCoefficients

StandardizedCoefficients t Sig.

B Std. Error Beta

Involvement .591 .218 .288 2.703 .009

Bran Trust .314 .150 .213 2.089 .041

Brand Influence Score .369 .089 .439 4.161 .000

Consideration Set -1.571 .777 -.204 -2.021 .048

Dependent Variable: Brand LoyaltyAdjusted R Square: .408: F: 11.157, P

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sensory evaluations. Factor analysis of the items confirmed the multidimensional nature of theconsumer involvement profile.

These research findings are of significance to marketing practitioners and reveal theteenagers influence of involvement on brand loyalty. Results show that teenagers attach moreimportance to 'interest and pleasure' dimension followed by 'risk importance'. Frommanagerial point of view, these results imply that teenagers can be persuaded to buy aparticular brand of mobile by consistently adding new features that offer unique benefits.Precisely, the concept of 'innovation through technology' needs to be focused on. It issuggested that marketing professionals should conduct surveys to identify the expectation ofteenage users, which changes frequently.Specifically the present study offers brand executives a meaningful and valuable insight to guidethem in winning competition. 'Pleasure' has emerged as another important factor in theinvolvement scale. The respondents feel that pleasure facet is a driving force in selecting aparticular brand of cell phone and this provides a clue to the corporate that the store ambienceand behaviour of the store personnel should be accentuated in a manner so as to highlight thepleasure aspect. Executives can perform Multi Dimension Scaling Technique to identify thepositions of competitive brands in the market and select unique positioning for their brand. Thiscan be achieved by creating specific association (Aaker, 1991) for their brand.

'Sign' dimension has been extracted as an important factor in the analysis. It confirms thatmobile brands do reflect the personality of teenage users. This result is highly relevant tomanagers involved in developing an identity for their brands. They can explore the possibility oflaunching special models exclusively for high-end teenage consumers and help establish asense of pride by owning that brand. (e.g. Blackberry, Nokia E Series, I phone,).This outcome of the results of multiple regression analysis suggests that 'pleasure and signvalue' influences brand loyalty significantly. This is the testimony that 'innovative features' of theproduct is the key determinant of brand selection.

1.10 Limitations and Direction for Future ResearchCautions should be made while generalizing the findings of this study, considering sample sizeand area of study. The research conducted among the Indian consumers may be subject tocultural influence and the similar study of brand loyalty in other countries is recommendable.This study focused only on limited variety of products. The study included one durable and threeFMCG products, and hence, the results are not applicable to other products. Further research isrequired for other products and services and comparisons could be made across differentproduct classes. It is suggested that an interesting avenue to pursue research would be toinvestigate whether loyal consumers and switchers differ in their information search, promotionalsensitivity, and the extent to which brand loyalty is affected by sales promotion offers.

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Appendices

Appendix IBIS Scale Validity and Reliability

Variables Component

BIS I .728

BIS II .682

BIS II .620

BIS IV .666

BIS V .566

BIS VI .787

BIS VII .666Alpha .712

Appendix -IIVariables Initial Eigen Values

Total% of

VarianceCumulative

%BIS 3.209 45.847 45.847

Appendix -III

Scales Alpha Values

Involvement .713

Brand Trust .695

Brand Influence Score .723

Risk Probability .679

Risk Importance .702

Pleasure .723

Sign Value .649

Appendix IV

Test -retest Reliability

Variables Component

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Appendix V

Demographic CharacteristicsVariable Characteristics Respondents

Kolkata Delhi Hyderabad Bangalore

No. % No. % No. % No. %

Age: Below 15

Years

15 to 17

Years

18 to 19

Years

13

131

18

8

80

12

11

62

12

13

73

14

12

84

16

11

72

17

12

61

15

14

69

17

Total 162 100 85 100 112 100 88 100

Sign Value .735

Pleasure .749

Risk Probability ..756

Risk Importance ..762

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Sex : Male

Female

121

41

75

25

49

36

58

42

69

43

62

38

49

39

56

44

Total 162 100 85 100 112 100 88 100

Educational

Qualification:Below 10

th

Standard

10 12th

Standard

Above 12thStandard

48

92

22

29

58

13

14

52

19

16

61

25

29

69

14

26

62

12

26

49

13

29

56

15

Total 162 100 85 100 112 100 88 100

Medium of

Instruction:

Vernacular

English

20

142

12

88

06

79

7

93

07

105

6

94

16

72

18

82

Total 162 100 85 100 112 100 88 100

Family

Income:

(per month)

Up to Rs

30,000

Rs. 30,000

to Rs

50,000

Rs 50000

and above

44

92

24

27

57

16

11

55

19

13

65

22

19

79

14

17

70

13

11

59

18

12

67

21

Total 162 100 85 100 112 100 88 100