,,How do I get people to buy my product?” Nowadays companies still greatly appreciate the answer to this question but they have also realized that getting customers is not the only thing they need to do. In today’s rapidly moving world consumers don’t stick with products for life. Advertisements and an increased feeling of independence have created consumers that will switch brands or products as soon as the feel the need to do so. What company’s look for in this consumer environment is creating a so-called brand loyalty.

This paper will explore the ways companies go about in creating this brand loyalty and it will investigate the circumstances and effects that come with it. It will start of by thoroughly explaining what brand loyalty exactly is. After that an overview of key success factors stimulating brand loyalty will be given and we will have a look at how these factors are influenced by different conditions. Examples will be provided. The relationships between brand loyalty and brand commitment and satisfaction will be explored. Finally a conclusion will be reached on how important brand

How exactly do these disconfirmations arise? With respect to services provided to consumers, the SERVQUAL model (see appendix II) gives some interesting explanations for these disconfirmations or discrepancies. The model goes further on Oliver's disconfirmation theory by defining and explaining other forms of disconfirmations than the one that arises out of the difference between expected and experienced service. These other discrepancies e.g. arise as a result of how consumer expectations are perceived by the service provider or how the actual service provided differs from the directives given about how to provide the service. The article of Antonides and van Raaij (1998) continues with how these discrepancies can result in consumer (dis)satisfaction and eventually perhaps in complaints.

Before one can give a definition of brand loyalty one first has to make the distinction between repeat purchasing behavior and brand loyalty. ‘Repeat purchasing behavior is the actual rebuying of a brand.’ So the behavioral aspect of this action. Brand loyalty also includes ‘that behavior’s antecedents’. This means the reason or fact occurring before the behavior. When talking about brand loyalty we can yet again make a distinction between two types: On the one hand we have spurious brand loyalty and on the other true brand loyalty. The former was defined by Bloemer and Kasper as the ‘(1) biased (2) behavioral response (3) expressed over time (4) by some decision-making unit (5) with respect to one or more alternative brands out of a set of such brand, (6) which is a function of inertia.’ The key word here is inertia meaning without commitment towards the brand. Their definition the latter, and the most important one in this paper, is exactly the same on the first five points but differs for the sixth adding ‘is a function of psychological (decision making, evaluative) processes resulting in brand commitment.’ In this definition brand commitment is the key word.

Evaluating what has been said, the task of a marketing department is to have many manifested satisfied consumers, because they are the ones that are brand loyal. In order to have a high number of such consumers, marketing tools should be adequately implemented to increase the motivation and the capacity of the consumers to evaluate brand choice. This can be achieved by accentuating the differences between different brands and stressing the important characteristics of the brand, by providing clear and understandable information about the brand, or by building a permanent relationship with the customer. An example of a

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