Antecedents and Consequents of Brand Love in the Smartphone Market: An Extended Study of the Impact of Switching Cost

Abstract

Smartphones, whose product lifespan is relatively short, still call for a better understanding of the role played by the brands when it comes to the customer’s buying decision. The objective of the present investigation is to test, in terms of validity, an extension of the Brand Love Model by Caroll and Ahuvia (2006); more specifically for the smartphone category, with the inclusion of the constructs Brand Switching Cost and Operational System Switching costs. In this direction, a survey was carried out and 453 users of smartphones responded. The analysis or the result was done by means of structural equation modeling and the results indicated that most of the relations predicted in the model proposed were confirmed, with an emphasis placed on significant influences of Brand Switching Cost on Loyalty. Other findings and their theoretical and general contributions of the investigation were discussed.

Keywords:

• Brand Love
• smartphones
• development and testing of new models
• switching cost
• branding