engleski

Impact of quality inconsistency on brand loyalty

Thanks to the fast spread of information via different digital media, today more than ever we are able to witness quality inconsistencies in various products or services. Maintaining product quality levels that consumers are expecting, or to be more precise, maintaining product quality perception is one of key elements in brand loyalty building process. Consumers express their loyalty by recurrently buying and consuming certain product brands and brand owners want to keep their customers' trust. Sometimes when major quality inconsistency occurs in a product, consumers may feel that their trust was betrayed and question their loyalty to that particular branded product. In such a case, brand owners are faced with a difficult decision making process which ultimately aims at regaining consumers' trust. Food, due to its direct impact on human health, is particularly in the spotlight and consumers are more likely to remember negative publicity or “affairs” related to specific food products or food brands. Food industry has relatively thick dossier of different affairs, from GMO use, high levels of histamine or mercury in tuna cans, to the latest problems with aflatoxin in milk from Croatian milk producers, or products that have horse meat mixed with beef in what are supposed to be solely beef products. This paper researches how quality inconsistency of food brands can affect brand loyalty.

Product quality; Brand perception; Brand loyalty; Crises brand management; Food industry

Sažetak rada je objavljen i u Zborniku sažetaka, ISBN: 978-953-7842-16-1