Brand Attachment on Service Loyalty in Banking Sector
The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of brand attachment on service loyalty to the services provided by financial sector. As one of the extremely valuable assets of every firm is its brand, attachment creates a deep emotional link between the consumers and the brand such that it contributes to the success of brand management process. To this end, the effects of two dimensions of the construct (brand self connection and brand prominence) on each of the dimensions of service loyalty would be explored. The questionnaire is based on Park et al. (2010) and Sudhahar et al. (2006) The results of structural equations modeling indicated that brand attachment had a significant positive effect on service loyalty. Furthermore, the existed a positive effect on the dimensions of brand attachmentiai.e. brand self connection and brand prominenceiaand all dimensions of loyaltyiai.e. behavioral, attitudinal, cognitive, conative, affective, commitment, and trust) Among them, brand self connection had the highest effect on cognitive loyalty, trust based loyalty, and commitment based loyalty while brand prominence was most effective on affective loyalty, cognitive loyalty, and trust based loyalty.Because of the increase in the number of institutions in banking sector and the diversity of services they offer, banking managers can take the advantage of using the results of brand attachment's effect on the study variables and enhance the loyalty to their services.