A STUDY OF THE RELATION BETWEEN BRAND LOYALTY AND CONSUMER INVOLVEMENT WITH PURCHASE DECISION AND PRODUCT CLASS

This paper aims to analyze the correlations between the components of brand loyalty – brand repurchase intention and brand recommend intention – and consumer purchase involvement, which is reflected by the degree to which consumers seek information about different brands and compare them during their purchase decision-making process. Being conducted in a comparative manner, the research considered the cases of two product classes – durables and nondurables – with an investigation of statistics on the population of urban Romanian consumers. The results show that the more involved the consumers are in the purchase decision for a durable good, the more loyal they are in terms of repurchase intention to a certain preferred brand in that product class. However, there is no similar relation in the case of nondurable goods. The study also shows that the consumers are more loyal, in terms of recommend intention the consumers willing to make in the future, to a certain preferred brand in both durable and nondurable goods when they are more involved in the purchase decision. However, the relation is found stronger in the case of nondurable goods.