Brand loyalty model for mobile social network application market in China

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop a brand loyalty model for the marketing and research of Mobile Social Networking Application (MSNA). As mobile commerce has become popular and Information Technology (IT) has displayed progression, MSNA along with their exceptional performances, has claimed its imminent functions in both life and career. Nevertheless, the market that holds MSNA is massive as suppliers suffer from fierce competitions, in which this study had probed into elaborating its status. As functions of applications begin to share similarities, companies seldom devise effective strategies to develop competitive strength. Based on prior results within the service industry, the brand loyalty has emerged to be an active factor in the competitive market, which can retain customers, attract new users, earn good mouth-of-word, and produce additional benefits. On the applications industry research field, the prior studies focused on technology acceptance field, and ignored the mediating effects of satisfaction and the moderating effect of group identification in brand loyalty models. This study amalgamated with Smartphone Augmented Reality Application Model (SARAM) and the brand loyalty theory to develop a new brand loyalty model for MSNA industry. In order to support the conceptual framework, this study applied quantitative analysis, and collected 640 valid samples online by using SmartPLS to examine the reflective model. The results of the quantitative analysis illustrated significant relationships between brand loyalty and satisfaction which is also an important mediator for both attitudinal brand loyalty and behavioural brand loyalty as the dependent variables in the model. After integrating the moderated regression analysis and path analysis, the current research found the relationships between group identification, satisfaction and brand loyalty as significant, but the moderating effect is not supported. In summary, the present study built the MSNA model with brand loyalty. Future researcher should continuously study other moderating or mediating effect on the new MSNA brand loyalty model and strengthen the branding strategy for the MSNA industry.