Determining The Relationship Between Brand Experience And Brand Loyalty And The Moderating Role of Demographic Variables (Case Study: Customers of Mashhad Water Parks Complex)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Master of Sciences in Sports Management, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.

2 Assistant Professor of Sport Management, Faculty of Sport Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

Abstract

Sports are changing to a lucrative industry in developed countries.And sport managers are seek potentials for current and in shade that for sports – financial purposes achievement. One of sport’s financial aspects is marketing and it is issues. Sport’s complexs marketing more emphasis base serving and sports customers (following and fans).Therefore the services natural options branding is other most important aspect of marketing (KAPFERER, 2008). In this situation success managers that aspect sports financial the work priority. On the other, any sports complex can be as a brand and considered fans as customers. Therefore, managers can use branding strategies. The missing link these days of sports complexes especially Iranian water parks, low attention managers and marketing planers of these complexes are the most important factor in the financial circulation sports organizations is the fans and customers. research method, research method descriptive and correlational and the method of collecting data from the field type and research tool a statistical population of this study included all customers of Mashhad water parks (Blue waves, Roaring wavers, AFTAB beach parks and Iranian water parks), it was in year 1396.
The number of the population in non – peak days 2500 people. Cochran used was to determine the sample size considering that the statistical population is unlimited, by entering the required information, the sample size of 384 people was calculated. This number obtained was according to the estimation of monthly customers of water parks. In this research, according to the statistical features, stratified sampling used was according to the population of each class. In this research, brand experience as dependent variables and gender, age and employment history considered were as moderating variables. The questionnaire of this research consists of two main parts, which taken are from related studies in that field. First the part (general questions), an attempt has been made to collecting demographic information about the respondents and in the second part (specialized questions), to collect data from 13 – question brand loyalty questionnaires,HOLBORK et al (2001), with a coefficient of 755% (behavioural loyalty 4 questions with a coefficient 76% and attitudinal loyalty 9 questions with coefficient 74%) and brand experience questionnaire; BARACUS, SMITH and ZARANTONELLO (2009), used 6 questions with coefficient value 781%. The five – point LIKRET scale, which is one of the most common measurement scales, used was to design the questionnaire. Also, in order to analyse the data, in addition to using statistical indicators such as frequency, percentage, average and standard deviation, from the inferential statistical methods of spearman’s test and point range, in order to investigate the relationship between the components of brand loyalty, as well as demographic variables (employment history, age and gender), were used.
Finding research, the descriptive results of the research showed that most of the participants in this research are in the age range of 21- 30 years (42%), 8% below 20 year, 26% between 31 – 40 years, 14% between 41 – 49 years old and 10% were over 50 years old. Most of the research sample consisted of 52% woman and 48% men. Other findings of the research include the occupations of the people participating in the research, 35% of the respondents were self – employed, 28% were office workers, 5% were military, 13% were students, 6% were seminary and 13% were housewives. In order to examine the research questions and choose the appropriate statistical test, KOLMOGOROV – SMIRNOV test was used. The results of KOLMOGROV – SMIRNOV showed that all research variables and their components have a non – normality distribution. According to abnormality considering the non – normality of all research variables, SPEARMAN’S test was used to investigate the relationship between brand experience and brand loyalty. The results of the SPEARMAN showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the variables of brand experience and brand loyalty at the level of (P<0.001), (r= 0.801). The Next relationship between brand loyalty dimensions (attitudinal loyalty and behavioural loyalty), with brand experience variable was examined the results of the SPEARMAN test showed that between attitudinal loyalty and brand experience (r= 0.670), there is a positive and significant relationship at the level (P<0.001).Also, to test the relationship between demographic variables (employment history, age and gender) with the brand experience variable, due to the ranking of these variable, SPEARMAN’S correlation coefficient was used. Findings showed that there is no significant relationship between these two variables with the brand experience variable (P>0.05). Finally, considering that the gender variable is considered as a two – category or two – valued real variable and organizational citizenship behaviour is considered a distance variable, the two – point correlation coefficient was used to investigate the relationship between them and the findings there is no significant correlation between these two variables (P>0.05). Discussion and conclusion; the purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between brand experience and brand loyalty to customers of Mashhad water parks. The main purpose of the research was to determine the relationship between brand loyalty and brand experience and considering the dimensions of brand loyalty, them was determined with the brand experience and then the relationship between the moderating variables (employment history, age and gender) with the brand experience was determined.
The research findings showed that there was a significant and positive relationship between brand experience and brand loyalty (P≤ 0.1, r= 0.801). Brand experience means the consumer internal response (emotional and cognitive feeling), as well as his response to brand stimuli and these stimuli include; design, packaging, brand identity and concepts like that brand experience can be positive or negative. It suggested to sports complexs and sports manufactures and marketers to provide the mean of doing things that create a positive experience and attract for consumers. Other research findings show that, there is a positive and significant relationship between brand experience and behavioural and attitudinal loyalty customers of Mashhad water parks. These findings are consistent with the research results (BARAKOS et al. 2009), (SHAIN et al. 2011), (WALTER et al. 2013) and (EBRAHIMI et al. 2013). In this research, no significant relationship found was between the desired moderating variables (age, gender and employment history) and brand experience, which indicates that these variables may not have much effect on the relationship between brand loyalty and its components. Due to the existence of a strong relationship between brand experience and brand loyalty obtained in this research, it can suggest to the managers and planners of water parks to pay attention to brand experience as one of the important factors in creating brand loyalty.

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