Identification of brand loyalty strategies with quality function deployment: An application in home appliances industry in İzmir

Under today?s business circumstances, companies increasingly seek to differentiate themselves from their competitors in the market to create competitive advantage and to reach ultimate goal, profitability through customer satisfaction. This differentiation is possible by managing brand effectively. On the other hand, in current highly competitive environments, managing brand and improving brand loyalty provides a long-term secure position in the market. Brand loyalty as an important element of brand equity helps the firm by supporting less vulnerability to competitive actions and brand loyalty strategies can be defined as long term investment of the company. For that reason, building and maintaining brand loyalty has become a marketing priority for many companies.Brand loyalty is a complex issue that is related to most of the marketing dynamics and it covers behavioral and attitudinal approaches. In a specific time period, consistent repeat purchasing behavior reflects behavioral approach of brand loyalty. According to attitudinal approach, brand loyalty is not just the output of repeat purchasing; it is also the result of favorable attitudes toward brand. Because of multi-dimensional structure of brand loyalty, understanding and the interpreting this concept required a comprehensive and complicated study. Besides, although there are plenty of studies regarding the relationship between brand loyalty and trust, satisfaction, involvement, brand image etc., there are limited studies that explain the requirements of customers to be loyal.The purpose of this study is to explore the requirements to be loyal to specific brand and brand loyalty strategies of companies. In addition to this, another aim is to identify the relationships between the brand loyalty requirements and brand loyalty strategies. Quality Function Deployment methodology has been used to realize these aims. This study covers the home appliances (specifically refrigerator, washing machine, dishwasher and oven) under the durable goods classification. Women were selected as the target group to employ the research and the research were applied in İzmir. At the end of the study, the priorities of brand loyalty requirements of respondents were identified, hierarchies were organized as a result of applied survey and maximum value tables and house of quality matrix prepared to real home appliances company as a case study.Key Words: Brand, Brand Loyalty, Quality Function Deployment, House of Quality