The effects of consumer image and brand image congruity on brand loyalty

The rise of competition for the money in the consumers? pocket made it more challenging, and consumers are more valuable than ever, for the companies. Especially, due to the developments seen in communication and transportation technologies leading globalization, developing countries have caught the capacity and quality of developed world, enriching the markets with huge variety and amount, leaving consumers faced with many brands during purchase decision making. It may be comforting for companies to posses the brands looked for by consumer walking in front of shelves in a competitive business world ever.Arguments on brand loyalty concept, attracted attention in the first quarter of the 20th century, continued with increasing interest still to come with no agreement what brand loyalty is. An appropriate marketing program for brand loyalty development and management has not yet been offered for the business world by the academic world. If brand loyalty is to be managed, not only be observed, formation of brand loyalty should be determined. With this study, intends to enlighten brand loyalty formation process, it is aimed to contribute the marketing literature. In this study, hypothesized that congruence or incongruence of consumer image and brand image (image congruence) leads positive or negative attitudes towards brand and these attitudes affect consumer decision process as mediators, formation of brand loyalty process is approached from an image congruence perspective. Attitudes towards brand are; love/passion, self-connection, inter dependence, commitment, intimacy, and partner relationship quality.In the field study focusing on mobile phone manufacturer brands a preformed questionnaire is used as the data collection tool, and it is performed in Antalya city center, in Turkey. Pure data is analyzed with SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) in order to demonstrate how observed variables fit the theoretical model, and results are examined. Results show that consumer image and brand image congruence affect love/passion and commitment, and love/passion and commitment affect brand loyalty positively and statistically significantly. Other attitudes and satisfaction are found to have no statistically significant relation with brand loyalty.