Brand Loyalty: Testing how Social Stigmas Effect Buying Habits

Lauren Saltis
Julia Alvarado
Redmond Millerick
Jack Dailey
Anna Torrez

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As a child, coming home to find favorite foods and drinks in the pantry, it was
always the brand names that stuck out- not the generic. These are the memoires
that stick, because as children, brand names were almost a treat or a reward. In
todays society, brands can be seen as a high symbol of class, and without the
product consumers are made to feel inferior and as if they were missing out.
The way that brand loyalty has developed in consumers lives and the
importance that societies have placed on brands has created stigmas towards off
brand products. Generational loyalty is something that plays a huge part in how
people look at brands, because growing up with certain products, consumers do
not want to act against the normal purchasing pattern. Along with generational
loyalty, acclimating to new environments also plays an effect to social buying
habits. Environment may influence social buying habits. For example, shopping
with others may cause a consumer to sway from his or her normal buying habits.
By studying the phenomenon of why we personally and as a society play
into certain stigmas of brands and how that affects our buying habits, we were
able to see how people prefer band name, over generic and how different factors
play into that decision.
Brand loyalty, the ultimate trust and personal relationship that a consumer
has with a brand- and we found that the more popular the brand is, the more
likely the consumers are to buy it, solely based off of the status symbol that it
carries. It is a way to measure the connection between consumer and company.
Brand loyalty can be looked at through different factors. It is made up of trust,
security, investment, and connection. Buyers need to feel secure with their

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purchases, and that the quality of the product meets the appropriate standard,
and can justify the pricing. With the combination of these ideals, companies build
relationships with the consumer, creating life-long partnerships and integrating
the product into his or her daily life.
Brands that have stigmas associated with them are reflected in society as
negative statures. Within the branding world having negative stigmas can create
and lead to unsatisfied consumers. Stigmas can be the result of quality, pricing,
and perception of the public. In reference to shopping and buying habits the
generic products are looked at with a high stigma, while buying habits with wellknown brands that are popular results in higher social statuses.

Brand involvement plays a part in repatronage and how consumers view

brands, and by this- it influences how they looked at the brand as a whole. In the
case study Brand involvement in retaining customers despite dissatisfaction, it
tested theories on how strongly consumers are loyal to companies. This theory
is easily tested by looking at whether people will continuously going back to a
brand even in spite of any dissatisfaction with said brand. The integrity and
reputation that these brands carry make society more prone to repeat service. An
important part of this study was its demonstration that when some of these
brands have created such a vast empire and a visible reputation, they are still
able to retain certain customers even if they receive bad press. Results from
their survey shed light on the dedication that loyal consumers have to brand
involvement, regardless of any negative messages; thus showing, again, that,

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the consumers loyalty to the brand takes power over all else. This plays into the
construct as brand popularity affects social stigmas, because people end up
reverting to the more popular brands for society based reasons rather than those
based on personal opinion. This study found that the relationship between the
consumer and the brand plays a huge role in regards to brand loyalty.
In the article, Alcohol Advertising and Young Adults Binge Consumption
(Grieverson, Djafarova), looked at whether or not advertisements play a role in
increased alcohol consumption. The researchers started off by developing
testable questions, research question one asked if advertising exposure effects
overall consumption. This was important because it found that there is no
evidence that higher level of advertising exposure led to higher alcohol
consumption. The other research question was whether advertising exposer
influences binge drinking tendencies. Most respondents said that alcohol
advertisements in fact had little to no impact on binge drinking. The biggest
impact came from friends, or from other outside social pressures. What this study
led to, was that alcohol advertising is not an influencer for binge drinking, and if
anything it only leads to a small increase of drinking. It also showed that a
consumers friends have a high impact on the choices they make.
The article, Determinants of the Buying Behavior of Young Consumers of
Branded Clothes: An Empirical Analysis, Kansara, studies buying habits among
consumers regarding brand clothing and tested if there is an association between
different demographics. This study was trying to determine the different factors
affecting brand-clothing preference among specifically younger buyers. From the

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chi-square analysis, it was shown that there was a significant association

between the age, marital status, occupation and income level of the buyers. The
younger the participants, the more likely they are to buy brands based off of
status symbols alone. This helps with the current research as it shows the value
of just a brand name.
In the article Effects of Brand Awareness on Choice and Common,
Repeat- Purchase Product, Hoyer and Brown (1990) explore effects of brand
awareness on choice, brand sampling, and the frequency with which the highestquality brand is chosen following a series of trials. Participants of this study were
classified as first time peanut butter buyers. The researchers used a variety of
brands and then had participants blindly choose peanut butter as if they were in
the grocery store. The belief behind this method was that even though
participants were new to purchasing their own products, they would still be more
likely choose the popular brand. Furthermore, participants were told to test their
selected brand and explain why they chose this brand. Survey results supported
that participants were more likely choose the known brand name without ever
trying the product. This study relates to the construct through the similarities of
brand loyalty/awareness testing as well as both proved that blindly, consumers
are still more likely to choose the more popular brand.
There has been a lot of literature discussing the importance that brand
loyalty and consumers identification with a brand for companies. When a brand
creates a strong relationship with its consumers, the loyal customers become a
sort of free advertisement for the company, they can tell more people about the

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brand and sway people to switch brands. In Does Consumers Brand

Identification Matter: the Mediating Roles of Brand Loyalty (2011), researcher
Sutikno looked into the deeper connection of brand loyalty. Their research found
that brand loyalty is positively influenced by overall brand satisfaction as well as
loyal-consumers willingness to pay premium fees for further brand services.
This relates to the generic versus name brand study as brand loyalty directly
affects a persons ultimate choice in situations where they must chose between a
generic and more popular/common brand. It also pertains to further research
questions because when a consumer is extremely loyal to a brand, they will
probably attempt to persuade their friends and family to switch to their preferred
brand. This could create an environment in which a consumer switches from one
brand to another which could serve as a possible to answer to further questions
about what environment would cause a person to switch brands. This study also
gave further evidence provided in other research, that the relationship between
consumers and the brand is much like a human-to-human relationship, and
showed that maintenance of this relationship is the strongest contributor to brand
loyalty.
In The Impact of Consumer Perception Based Advertisement and
Celebrity Advertisement on Brand Acceptance, researchers, Hayat, Ghayyur and
Siddique, looked at how celebrity placement in ads affected consumers
perception of the brand. Past research had found that the presence of a celebrity
increased positive perception of the brand. The evidence that these researchers
found was no different, they once again found a positive relationship between

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celebrity placement and affirmative perception of a brand. As with the other

literature, this provides evidence of a social influence in brand perception. This
affects the study regarding generic versus name-brand choice as it shows that
social influencers, be that a name of a brand or a celebrity, do affect perception
and choice of brand with consumers.
All of the literature that was researched prior to the start of this study was
beneficial in creating the ideas behind the construct and measures. Yet certain
concepts could be seen through each of the articles and they therefore had a
larger impact on the constructs and measures that were created. The fourth
article, Effects of Brand Awareness on Choice and Common, Repeat- Purchase
Product, was particularly helpful in the creation of the measures used to collect
data for this study. Much like this particular article, the generic versus brandname study used both an observational measure as well as a survey in order to
study the brand popularity and the social buying habits and stigmas associated
with them.
The articles also helped in thinking of the theories that were the basis of
the construction of this study. The literature showed that brand awareness either
creates stigmas towards a product of can create brand loyalty. This brand loyalty
can influence consumers perception of a brand either positively or negatively.
Most of the studies looked at how brand loyalty affected consumers perception
of that particular brand yet not how it caused them to feel about their brands
rivals, which could be interesting to look further into, yet the research showed
that when a consumer is loyal to brand, it directly affects their purchasing habits.

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The research also demonstrated that brand awareness can create stigmas.
These stigmas can be created by one brand being shown as superior to all
others in media. When society then also adopts this perception it creates a
stigma that anything that doesnt have that brands name on it, is the inferior
product. This is where the basis of the study was born because societys general
preference for name-brand products creates a mentality that anything generic is
an inferior product. From these articles, the basis of the studys construct was
made.

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Construct: How brand popularity affects social buying habits and stigmas
H1- When eliminating the brand name, people will still unknowingly choose the
product of the brand and not the generic name.
H2- People believe that if a product costs more it will be higher quality because of
brand popularity.
The two types of measures our study used to measure brand popularity
and the social buying habits and stigmas associated with it were observational
measure and a survey.
Brand awareness either creates stigmas towards a product or can create
brand loyalty that an either impact positively or negatively towards the brand. We
saw that these things directly impacted the buying habits of the consumers. We
used these stigmas to create the survey
In developing the brand loyalty study, the degree to which people had
passion about branding and their food was tested. In the study created, the
decision was made to use granola bars (Quaker Chewy as A, and Kroger brand
as B.) Chewy is recognized as the brand name, while the Kroger brand has a
negative connotation or stigma against it. The process that was investigated was
to see, with a true blind test, if results would insure that there was no bias toward
one brand over the other. The questions used for brand A. tried to uncover if A
was better than B, or if consumers were more likely to buy A over B. The survey
found a high significance between A and B, with participants having preferred A.
Furthermore, the mean determined that participants could tell a difference
between A and B, and that A was preferred. We found that this preference of A
proved our first hypothesis. Even when eliminating the brand name, people will
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still unknowingly choose the product of the brand and not the generic name.
Within the two-tailed T-Test, the first hypothesis may not have been due to
chance.
For the next food type, the fruit snacks testing strongly suggested that
there was not a significance difference between A and B, because both A and B
ended up being around the same mean at 3.008 and 3.024, respectfully. Another
factor that was evident in the study showed this difference was not due to
chance. This supports evidence that there is no preferential difference between A
and B. The blind test was used to investigate how important face value is in
regards social buying patterns.
After the initial study, the group wanted to create a behavioral
measurement that would coincide with the hypothesis that brand name goes
along with perceived higher quality and status. Following the first survey, the
participants were given the reward of choosing either the Chewy or Kroger brand
granola bar. What was studied was which brand was picked up. What was found
was that the overall results of the behavior measurement strongly showed that
Chewy bars were overwhelming chosen over the Kroger brand. Just from the
groups observation, it was revealed that participants were obviously digging
within the bowl to find more of the Chewy bars. The participants made an
extreme effort to seek out only the granola bars they declared high quality. When
the Chewy bars started dwindling, people began to not take any, seemingly
choosing to forgo a free granola bar instead of taking one that could be

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presumed as lower quality. 10 of the 12 Chewy bars were taken, as opposed to

only 3 out of 12 Kroger granola bars.

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