A STUDY ON FACTORS AFFECTING AND INFLUENCING BRAND LOYALTY TOWARDS CAR PURCHASE IN MADURAI DISTRICT

Abstract

Automobile sector in India has grown from a couple of manufacturer to thirty twomanufactures in a very short span of time.  The brand managers are finding it extremely difficult to differentiate the products as well as brand themselves uniquely, since all the automobile manufacturers deliver the same features, services and at an identical price.  Influence level of Brand loyalty is the best solution for the brand managers to differentiate the product in the minds of the consumers.  Maruti Suzuki has been recognisedas the “most trusted brand’ consecutively for the last 21 years by JD power Asia Pacific. The first Maruti Car was launched in 1983 as a poor man’s car and since then it has been in the market as the most successful brand for the past thirty eight years.  The objective of the study is to evaluate the various customer segments in Madurai city driving MarutiBaleno cars and to determine the brand loyalty by studying   the relationship and impact of human personality on brand loyalty.

            In stage one,the segment analysis is based on the twelve brand loyalty items among the owners of MarutiBaleno. Multiple Regressesionwas used to identify the variables, which discriminated the sample into various segments.  Also multiple regressions were conducted to identify the cause and effect relationship.  In stage II multiple regressions was used to identify the impact of human personality on Brand loyalty variables.  In stage III to identify the discriminating human personality items which influenced the brand loyalty items, multiple discriminate analyses were used. Monaovawas applied to the data to identify the personal factors that influenced the brand loyalty dimensions.

            The segmentation of the owners of MarutiBaleno helped in identifying four major segments viz. utilitarian’s, traditionalist, emotionalist and protagonist.  Structural equation modeling - Amos analyses revealed the brand loyalty dimension of MarutiBaleno as trust  and extraversion as the human personality.