It is difficult to satisfy customers only by means of the functional quality of products to meet their diverse needs. Thus, many companies require consumer-oriented production activities and make attempt to build customer relationships as a means of providing a competitive advantage. Because customer relationship management is connected to the profit-making activities of a company directly, it is considered as a very important means of retaining customers and obtaining profits in the highly competitive business environment. It is also considered as a guideline for the survival of the company.
As the marketing paradigm has changed from short-term business marketing that stresses mainly product transactions to relationship marketing and its connection to long-term relationships with customers, companies now offer social benefits, confidence benefits and special treatment benefits to them. These benefits play a crucial role in building a customer loyalty toward companies. Therefore, it is an important strategic task to improve brand loyalty for existing customers rather than focus on acquiring new ones.
Customers can satisfy their desire to express themselves by consuming brands whose image correspond to their own self-images. They experience positive feelings such as pleasure and happiness through the spending process. In a series of process like this, we call it brand identification matches with consumer's self-image and brand's image. A strong degree of agreement between the consumer's self-image and the brand image has positive effect on their continuous purchase intention for the products or services offered by the brand, which can lead to loyalty for companies. As customers feel greater brand identification, brand loyalty grows.
Therefore, this study takes relational benefit factors to investigate effects of brand identification and brand loyalty intentions. The result can provide directions with which companies can formulate effective customer management strategies. In our case, the company in question is beauty shop.
194 examples were secured as a result of a survey of beauty shops in Daejeon, Korea, in an effort to carry out an empirical study. The suit ability of the model was verified through structural equation modeling(SEM).
The results of this study are as follows.
First, social benefit and special treatment benefit were shown to have a positive effect on social brand identification, whereas the confidence benefit has a positive effect on personal brand identification.
Second, personal brand identification has a positive effect on brand loyalty intentions. Another finding was that social brand identification has a positive effect on brand loyalty intentions as mediated by personal brand identification, whereas social brand identification does not have a positive effect on brand loyalty intentions.
This study is significant in that it supports theories about relational benefits and brand identification and suggests a marketing strategy to strengthen and maintain relationships between service providers and customers.