The role of brand experience and affective commitment in determining brand loyalty

The purpose of this article is to study the direct and indirect relationship between brand experience and brand loyalty. The authors propose that the relationship is mediated by affective commitment. A survey-based quantitative approach is used to test the hypotheses based on the proposed theoretical model that delineates the relationships between brand experience, affective commitment and brand loyalty. The data were collected using traditional pen and paper as well as online surveys and were analysed using Structural Equations Modelling. The analysis suggests that affective commitment mediates the relationship between brand experience and brand loyalty for all three product categories that were studied (cars, laptops and sneakers). The article extends the understanding of the brand experience construct by studying its influence on brand loyalty and also by incorporating affective commitment as a mediating variable. In our sample, the findings support the fact that developing brand experience influences customer loyalty only through affective commitment.