ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH

Brand loyalty is a fundamental concept in brand buying behavior research. It is generally recognized as an asset that firms need to invest in (Aaker, 1984). Therefore developing and maintaining customer loyalty to the company’s brand is a critical task for all marketers (Goldberg, 1982). In order to do so, marketers need to understand factors that influence brand loyalty. Brand loyalty can be classified in either behavioral or attitudinal terms (Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001). Behavioral loyalty measures the actual purchases of the brand observed over a particular time period while attitudinal loyalty is based on stated preferences, commitment or purchase intentions of the consumers (Mellens et al., 1996). While many covariates of attitudinal loyalty have been posited, behavioral loyalty has shown few correlates or predictors and this has been controversial. With an attempt to settle some of the current debates, behavioral loyalty is the area of interest for this article. The relationship between behavioral loyalty and general demographics has been of interest to researchers for decades. For example, Frank’s (1967) study of multiple brands in 44 grocery product categories finds virtually no associations between socioeconomics and brand loyalty. As such, he concludes that demographic variables are not effective predictors of brand loyalty. Fennell et al. (2003) and Hammond et al. (1996) examine brands in multiple grocery product categories and find that general demographic and psychographic variables are not useful in explaining brand choice. Uncles and Ehrenberg (1990) and Uncles and Lee (2006) extensively study the relationship between age and brand choice and find that patterns of brand buying are similar between older and younger consumers. Conversely, other researchers postulate that older consumers’ brand choices are different from younger consumers (e.g. Cole et al., 2008; Lambert-Pandraud and Laurent, 2010; Lambert-Pandraud et al., 2005). Lambert-Pandraud and Laurent (2010) and Lambert-Pandraud et al. (2005) provide evidence that younger consumers have a greater propensity to change their preferred brand while older consumers exhibit a propensity to remain attached for a longer duration to the same preferred brand. Lambert-Pandraud and Laurent (2010) argue that innovativeness and attachment mechanisms lead to such results. The innovativeness mechanism suggests that as the consumers get older, they are less willing to explore new options. With the attachment mechanism, the consumers can develop an attachment to their preferred brands over the years, from childhood to older ages. As such, the older the consumers are, the more loyalty the consumers devote to their preferred brands. Yet, it is worth noting that, in contrast to previous studies of household grocery products, LambertPandraud and Laurent (2010) and Lambert-Pandraud et al. (2005)’s findings are based on high involvement products (perfume and cars). In summary, studies find that brand loyalty does not vary across age ranges for household consumption products. But for high involvement products, age does correlate with brand loyalty. One possible reason to explain this contradiction is that using age alone as a covariate for household brand loyalty only captures one aspect of the household, while household brand choice might be influenced by multidimensional household characteristics. To overcome this drawback, we propose using household life cycle rather than age to predict brand loyalty for household grocery products. Research suggests that life cycle is likely to be a more meaningful way of classifying consumers than age (Wells and Gubar, 1966). Additionally, life-changing events strongly correlate with changes in consumer preference (Mathur et al., 2008; 2003). As such, we might expect some effects of household life cycle on brand loyalty. The advantage of household life cycle over other demographic variables is that it captures multiple characteristics of consumers including age, household size, and life changing events such as marriage, the addition/departure of children, and death of spouse. Thus it reflects many factors that influence brand choice, especially in household grocery products. For example, financial burdens at the young family stage with dependent children might encourage households to switch brands to find cheaper alternatives. In contrast, at the post family stage with no dependent children households might be in a better financial position, hence they can afford to buy their preferred brands, resulting in higher brand loyalty. Moreover, the degree of agreement in purchasing decisions between members of the household could influence brand loyalty over the household life cycle stages. Further, the preferences of husband and wife become more similar over the stages of household life cycle (Cox, 1975). Consequently we could expect less variation in brand choice at the later stages of the household life cycle. The relationship between household life cycle and consumer behavior is widely studied in marketing and consumer research (e.g. Danko and Schaninger, 1990; Douthitt and Fedyk, 1988; Douthitt and Fedyk, 1990; Du and Kamakura, 2006; Fritzsche, 1981; McLeod and Ellis, 1982; Putler et al., 2007; Redondo-Bellón et al., 2001; Wagner and Hanna, 1983; Schaninger and Danko, 1993; Wells and Gubar, 1966; Wilkes, 1995). Most of these studies examine the effects of household life cycle on product category buying behavior. For example, Wilkes (1995) finds a strong relationship between household life cycle and household spending across a wide range of categories including appliance, furniture, entertainment, travel, childcare and automobile. Danko and Schaninger (1990) report significant differences in food and beverage consumption across different household life cycle stages. Wagner and Hanna (1983) show that life cycle successfully explains the variance in total family clothing expenditures. Fritzsche (1981) finds a significant difference in energy consumption by stage of life cycle. Yet there is a lack of research on household life cycle effects on brand, rather than category, buying behavior. Therefore, this research explores whether and how household loyalty to a brand varies through different stages in their life cycle. We seek to establish the patterns of brand loyalty that households express at different stages in their life cycle.