Bottling Identities: A Study of Consumer Identity Salience and Beer Brand Loyalty in the Ethiopian Beer Market
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Date
2021-09-13
Authors
Debebe , Netsanet
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This study examined how consumer’s decision-making process in consuming a brand is affected by important variables such as a salient identity; the extent of loyalty; intention to buy; brand ownership; and, the efforts of spreading positive information about a brand. The study is informed by multi-dimensional consumer-brand relationship theories and social identity theory to examine how consumers’ identity salience can affect their relationships with brands. The multidimensional theories used in thus study posit that brand loyalty is a function of relative attitude toward a brand and repeated patronage. Social identity theory posits that people hierarchically arrange multiple identities and categorize themselves in in-groups and are defined by the characteristics of the group they identify themselves with. Survey data from students in four public universities in Ethiopia (N=290) was obtained for this study. One of the interesting findings in this study is that awareness about a brand’s owner, or the contrary, does not make a difference in the extent of word-of-mouth advertising consumers do for a brand. This study finds that increased loyalty to a brand is a predictor of an increased intention to buy a brand; consumers with a stronger loyalty to a brand do engage in an increased word-of-mouth advertising effort; a significant difference in word-of-mouth advertising between consumers who have higher brand loyalty for brands owned by local but out-of-regional state companies, local and within- regional-state, and for international companies. This study does not find a statistically significant result to support the claim that consumers with higher ethnic identity salience will have lower purchase intention to out-of-state brand ownership. There was also no support to say consumers who have higher ethnic identity scores will have a decreased intention to buy a beer brand whose owners are out-of-state. This was true for both international and out-of-state ownership. It also does not find that word-of-mouth advertising will be higher to brands owned by international companies than those owned by local, but out-of-state companies.
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Keywords
Beer advertising, Brand loyalty, Consumer behavior, Identity salience