Abstract:
In this thesis, the brand loyalty in the Turkish toothpaste market was investigated. The basic purpose of the study was to find out the correlates of brand loyalty and to understand the factors that are related to product characteristics and consumers' characteristics in differentiating loyal people from the nonloyals. In this analysis the toothpaste market is choosen since the product is accepted as being a high loyalty one, and use frequency is higher than some other products. Finally the Turkish toothpaste market has some special characteristics that can be accepted as a case for brand loyalty. In order to annlyze brand loyalty, ]50 respondents including representatives of aIl socio-economic classes were chosen by quota sampling methods. Because of some control questions only 112 of these responses were used. As a result of a specific brand loyalty measurement being developed, 47 people were accepted as brand loyal. Then, the differentiatin demographic and socio-economic characteristics of these people as compared with nonloyal people and the relating to toothpaste, were analyzed in detail. As a result, it was found that if all of these attributes were considered together in the form of a function, they differentiated the loyal people from the nonloyals. However, in analyzing them one by one only a few of them such as the importance given to whitening power of toothpaste and being translucent showed differences in loyal and nonloyal people. Together with this, when the demographic and socio-econornic characteristics of respondents were analyzed income and education level seemed to be differentiating characteristics for brand loyal and nonloyal consumers. The study includes a summary of different concepts and measurement methods for brand loyalty, the literature review, and a field study which was conducted through a questionnaire The interpretation of data was done through computer, and impIications for marketers and academicians are presented.
