The chain of effects from brand personality and functional congruity to stages of brand loyalty: The moderating role of gender

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify the impacts of brand personality and functional congruity on various components of brand loyalty (i.e. cognitive, affective, and conative) by examining the moderating role of gender.

Design/methodology/approach
The proposed model is examined by considering car as a product brand stimulus. Using a self-structured questionnaire, 263 usable responses are considered for data analysis by applying the structural equation modelling method.

Findings
The findings indicate that all hypotheses on the relationships between brand personality, functional congruity, and stages of brand loyalty are supported except for the relationship between brand personality and conative loyalty, whereby brand personality indirectly have impacts on conative brand loyalty via functional congruity. The outcome of the multi-group analysis shows that the impact of brand personality and functional congruity on cognitive, affective, and conative brand loyalty varies across gender groups.

Practical implications
The results indicate that if marketing managers are willing to create cognitive, affective as well as conative brand loyalty among consumers, they ought to tally their consumers’ purchasing and evaluation criteria with the functional and symbolic attributes. If the target consumers were motivated to purchase the product based on the symbolic attributes (as preferred by females in the present study), more attention should be focussed on communicating and delivering the symbolic attributes during their marketing campaign; on the other hand, if the consumers were inclined to buy product based on the utilitarian functions (as preferred by males in the current study), more emphasis should be placed on the functional values and attributes.

Originality/value
This study is the first to utilise self-congruity and the elaboration likelihood model to explain the influence of brand personality and functional congruity on each component of brand loyalty within the automobile industry’s context. This study on the moderating role of gender shows that the effect of brand personality and functional congruity is different across gender groups. The findings can help marketers to design an effective brand positioning and marketing strategies in order to stay competitive.