Persistent Preferences in Market Place Choices: Brand Loyalty, Choice Inertia, and Something in Between

Persistent Preferences in Market Place Choices has as its primary focus the type of brand loyalty that is not deeply rooted in values, emotions, and intense person-brand relationships. While some view that loyalty cannot exist without strong emotional involvement and bonding, the author suggests a milder phenomenon - persistent preference - for the chosen brand and its attributes. Persistent preferences refer to preferring a previously chosen brand to other brands even when a subset of these are superior to the previously chosen brand in terms of attributes, economy, or overall quality. Persistence also refers to a lack of change in beliefs or evaluations toward the chosen brand due to counter-evaluative information supplied by competitors or other sources. An understanding of why and how consumers develop persistent preferences is interesting from both theoretical and managerial perspectives. Persistent Preferences in Market Place Choices reviews classic research on loyalty, the many definitions of commitment and their relevance for persistent preference, the constituents of preference persistence, research on attitude strength, and behavioral decision theory research relevant for preference persistence. The author concludes by summarizing the types of loyalty and their strengths.