Etik Marka Algıları ve Marka Sadakati ile Marka Seçim Yönelimi üzerindeki Etkileri: Duygusal Marka Bağlılığının Arabulucu Rolü

Yıl 2019, Cilt: 14 Sayı: 56, 448 - 459, 31.10.2019

Zanete Garanti

Öz

Geçtiğimiz on yıllık
dönemde, şirketlerin icraatları müşterilerin erişiminde bulunan teknolojik
gelişmeler sayesinde her zamankinden daha şeffaf bir hale gelmiştir. Bahsekonu
şeffaflık, toplumun ahlaki ve etik değerlerini karşılamayan şirketlerin
müşteriler tarafından farkedilmesini sağlamaktadır. Söz konusu şirketler ağır
bir şekilde eleştirilmekle kalmayıp, işçi hakları, çalışma şartları, çocuk
işçiliği, düşük ve eşit olmayan ödenek ve diğer etik olmayan faaliyetlerini
düzeltmek amacıyla kurumsal işlem yapmadıkları takdirde boykot edilmektedirler.
Global bir spor giyim kuruluşu olan Nike, 1970li yıllardan bu yana üçüncü dünya
ülkelerindeki taşeron fabrikalarında uyguladığı iddia edilen etik dışı
icraatları sebebiyle çeşitli eleştirilere maruz kalmaktadır. Bahsekonu kuruluş,
eleştiri konusu olan etik sorunlara değinmek amacıyla kurumsal düzeyde birtakım
programlar ve icraatlar gerçekleştirmiştir. Bu araştırma, Nike’ın etik imajını
iyileştirmek amacıyla gerçekleştirdiği yatırımlar ve kurumsal programlar
sonrasında müşterilerin Nike’ı etik bir marka olarak algılayıp
algılamadıklarını incelemektedir. Araştırma ayni zamanda etik marka
algılarının, duygusal marka sadakati, marka bağlılığı, ve marka seçim
yönelimleri ile ilişkisini incelemektedir. Bunun yanı sıra, marka bağlılığının
etik marka algıları, marka sadakati ve marka seçim yönelimi üzerindeki
arabulucu rolü araştırılmaktadır. Nicel olan bu araştırma, Kuzey Kıbrıs’ta
öğrenim gören 400 uluslararası öğrenci üzerinde gerçekleştirilmiş ve veriler
PLS-SEM kullanılarak analiz edilmiştir. Sonuçlar, etik marka algılarının,
duygusal marka bağlılığı ve marka sadakati üzerinde olumlu bir etkisi olduğunu
ortaya koymaktadır. Buna karşın, farklı markalara hızlı geçiş yapmalarıyla
bilinen öğrencilerin, içgüdüsel satın alıcı olmaları sebebiyle, etik marka
algılarının marka seçim yönelimleri üzerinde bir etkisi olmadığı görülmektedir.
Araştırma, duygusal marka bağlıluğının, marka sadakati ve marka seçim
yönelimleri ile olumlu bir ilişki içerisinde olduğunu ve ayrıca etik marka
algıları, marka sadakati ve marka seçim yönelimleri ilişkisi açısından bir
arabuluculuk rolüne sahip olduğunu göstermektedir. Makalede sonuçlar ve
araştırma bulgularının yansımaları tartışılmaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

: etik marka algıları, marka sadakati, marka seçim yönelimleri, duygusal marka bağlılığı, Nike, Kuzey Kib

Ethical Brand Perceptions and Their Impact on Brand Loyalty and Brand Choice Intentions: Mediating Role of Emotional Brand Attachment

Öz

In recent decades, with the
technological advancements available to customers, companies’ actions are more
transparent than ever and customers are aware of companies that does not meet
society’s moral and ethical values. Those companies are heavily criticized and
even boycotted unless they do take corporate actions to address their unethical
practices, whether it is labor rights, work conditions, child labor, low and
unequal pay or others. Nike, a global sportswear corporation, has suffered from
claims regards unethical practices in their subcontracted factories in third
world countries since 1970ties, and has implemented several programs and
actions at corporate level to address those ethical issues. This study looks at
whether after investments and corporate programs dedicated to improve Nikes ethical
image, customers do perceive Nike as ethical brand. Moreover, it also
investigates the relationship ethical brand perceptions have on emotional brand
attachment, as well as brand loyalty and brand choice intentions, and looks at
mediating role of emotional brand attachment in ethical brand perceptions and
brand loyalty and brand choice intentions relationship. The study was quantitative
in its nature, and was conducted on 400 international studies studying in
universities in Northern Cyprus, and obtained data was analyzed using PLS-SEM. The
study results reveal that ethical brand perceptions does have a positive effect
on emotional brand attachment, as well as brand loyalty. In contrast, ethical
brand perceptions does not impact brand choice intentions, as students are
known to be impulse buyers that quickly switch to other brands. Emotional brand
attachment does positively relate to brand loyalty and brand choice intentions,
and also is a mediator in ethical brand perceptions and brand loyalty and brand
choice intentions relationship. The results are discussed and implications
drawn from the findings of the study. 

Anahtar Kelimeler

ethical brand perceptions, brand loyalty, brand choice intentions, emotional brand attachment, Nike

Kaynakça

• Aguirre-Urreta, Miguel I., George M. Marakas, and Michael E. Ellis. "Measurement of composite reliability in research using partial least squares: some issues and an alternative approach." ACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems 44, no. 4 (2013): 11-43.Alarcón, David, José A. Sánchez, and U. De Olavide. "Assessing convergent and discriminant validity in the ADHD-R IV rating scale: User-written commands for Average Variance Extracted (AVE), Composite Reliability (CR), and Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT)." In Spanish STATA Meeting. 2015.Albort-Morant, Gema, Antonio Leal-Millán, and Gabriel Cepeda-Carrión. "The antecedents of green innovation performance: A model of learning and capabilities." Journal of Business Research 69, no. 11 (2016): 4912-4917.Alwi, Sharifah Faridah Syed, Sulaiman Muhammad Ali, and Bang Nguyen. "The importance of ethics in branding: Mediating effects of ethical branding on company reputation and brand loyalty." Business Ethics Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2017): 393-422.Andersch, Henrike, Christian Arnold, Ann-Kathrin Seemann, and Jörg Lindenmeier. "Understanding ethical purchasing behavior: Validation of an enhanced stage model of ethical behavior." Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 48 (2019): 50-59.Bahri-Ammari, Nedra, Mathilda Van Niekerk, Haykel Ben Khelil, and Jinene Chtioui. "The effects of brand attachment on behavioral loyalty in the luxury restaurant sector." International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 28, no. 3 (2016): 559-585.Ballinger, Jeff. "No sweat? Corporate social responsibility and the dilemma of anti-sweatshop activism." In New Labor Forum, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 91-98. Sage Publications, Inc., 2008.Baltar, Fabiola, and Ignasi Brunet. "Social research 2.0: virtual snowball sampling method using Facebook." Internet research22, no. 1 (2012): 57-74.Beltramini, Richard F., Robert A. Peterson, and George Kozmetsky. "Concerns of college students regarding business ethics." journal of Business Ethics 3, no. 3 (1984): 195-200.Bennett, Elizabeth A. "Extending ethical consumerism theory to semi-legal sectors: insights from recreational cannabis." Agriculture and human values (2017): 1-23.Bezençon, Valéry, and Reza Etemad-Sajadi. "The effect of a sustainable label portfolio on consumer perception of ethicality and retail patronage." International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management 43, no. 4/5 (2015): 314-328.Bird, Kate, and David R. Hughes. "Ethical consumerism: The case of “Fairly–Traded” coffee." Business ethics: A European review 6, no. 3 (1997): 159-167.Boje, David M. "Nike, Greek goddess of victory or cruelty? Women's stories of Asian factory life." Journal of Organizational Change Management 11 (1998): 461-480.Brunk, Katja H. "Exploring origins of ethical company/brand perceptions—A consumer perspective of corporate ethics." Journal of Business Research 63, no. 3 (2010a): 255-262.Brunk, Katja H. "Reputation building: beyond our control? Inferences in consumers' ethical perception formation." Journal of Consumer Behaviour 9, no. 4 (2010b): 275-292.Brunk, Katja H. "Un/ethical company and brand perceptions: Conceptualising and operationalising consumer meanings." Journal of business ethics 111, no. 4 (2012): 551-565.Brunk, Katja H., and Cara de Boer. "How do Consumers Reconcile Positive and Negative CSR-Related Information to Form an Ethical Brand Perception? A Mixed Method Inquiry." Journal of Business Ethics (2018): 1-16.Chen, Mei-Fang, and Liang-Hung Mau. "The impacts of ethical sales behaviour on customer loyalty in the life insurance industry." The Service Industries Journal 29, no. 1 (2009): 59-74.Coelho, Pedro Simões, Paulo Rita, and Zélia Raposo Santos. "On the relationship between consumer-brand identification, brand community, and brand loyalty." Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 43 (2018): 101-110.Connor, Tim. "Still waiting for Nike to do it: Nike's labor practices in the three years since CEO Phil Knight's speech to the National Press Club." Tim Connor (2001) Still Waiting for Nike to Do It: Nike’s Labor Practices in the Three Years Since CEO Phil Knight’s Speech to the National Press Club, Global Exchange, San Francisco, California (2001).Das, Gopal, James Agarwal, Naresh K. Malhotra, and Geetika Varshneya. "Does brand experience translate into brand commitment?: A mediated-moderation model of brand passion and perceived brand ethicality." Journal of Business Research95 (2019): 479-490.Delaney, Annie, Rosaria Burchielli, Jane Tate, and Homeworkers Worldwide. "Corporate CSR responses to homework and child labour in the Indian and Pakistan leather sector." In Can CSR responses be inclusive of informal women worker rights and priorities?. Leeds, 2016.Doane, Deborah. "Taking flight: The rapid growth of ethical consumerism." London: New Economics Foundation 1 (2001).Dwivedi, Abhishek, Lester W. Johnson, Dean Charles Wilkie, and Luciana De Araujo-Gil. "Consumer emotional brand attachment with social media brands and social media brand equity." European Journal of Marketing (2018).Farah, Maya F., and Andrew J. Newman. "Exploring consumer boycott intelligence using a socio-cognitive approach." Journal of Business Research 63, no. 4 (2010): 347-355.Fastoso, Fernando, and Héctor González-Jiménez. "Materialism, cosmopolitanism, and emotional brand attachment: The roles of ideal self-congruity and perceived brand globalness." Journal of Business Research (2018).Featherstone, Liza. Students against sweatshops. Verso, 2002.Fernandes, N. M. A., and T. Radebe. "Creating a positive digital customer experience to foster loyalty: a Generation Z perspective." In 30TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT SCIENTISTS (SAIMS), p. 423. 2018.Ferrell, O. C., Dana E. Harrison, Linda Ferrell, and Joe F. Hair. "Business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and brand attitudes: An exploratory study." Journal of Business Research95 (2019): 491-501. Fornell, Claes, and David F. Larcker. "Structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error: Algebra and statistics." (1981): 382-388.Foroudi, Pantea, Zhongqi Jin, Suraksha Gupta, Mohammad M. Foroudi, and Philip J. Kitchen. "Perceptional components of brand equity: Configuring the Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Paths to brand loyalty and brand purchase intention." Journal of Business Research 89 (2018): 462-474.Fuentes, Christian, and Niklas Sörum. "Agencing ethical consumers: smartphone apps and the socio-material reconfiguration of everyday life." Consumption Markets & Culture 22, no. 2 (2019): 131-156.Greenberg, Josh, and Graham Knight. "Framing sweatshops: Nike, global production, and the American news media." Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 1, no. 2 (2004): 151-175.Guèvremont, Amélie, and Bianca Grohmann. "The brand authenticity effect: situational and individual-level moderators." European Journal of Marketing 50, no. 3/4 (2016): 602-620.Hair, Joseph F., Rolph E. Anderson, Barry J. Babin, and Wiiliam C. Black. "Multivariate data analysis: A global perspective (Vol. 7)." (2010).He, Hongwei, Weichun Zhu, Dennis Gouran, and Olivia Kolo. "Moral identity centrality and cause-related marketing: The moderating effects of brand social responsibility image and emotional brand attachment." European Journal of Marketing50, no. 1/2 (2016): 236-259.He, Hongwei, Yan Li, and Lloyd Harris. "Social identity perspective on brand loyalty." Journal of business research65, no. 5 (2012): 648-657.Hemsley-Brown, Jane, and Ibrahim Alnawas. "Service quality and brand loyalty: the mediation effect of brand passion, brand affection and self-brand connection." International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 28, no. 12 (2016): 2771-2794.Henseler, Jörg, Christian M. Ringle, and Marko Sarstedt. "A new criterion for assessing discriminant validity in variance-based structural equation modeling." Journal of the academy of marketing science 43, no. 1 (2015): 115-135.Hung, Hsiu‐Yu, and Hao‐Te Lu. "The rosy side and the blue side of emotional brand attachment." Journal of Consumer Behaviour 17, no. 3 (2018): 302-312.Hwang, Eunmin, Seyhmus Baloglu, and Sarah Tanford. "Building loyalty through reward programs: The influence of perceptions of fairness and brand attachment." International Journal of Hospitality Management 76 (2019): 19-28.Iglesias, Oriol, Stefan Markovic, Jatinder Jit Singh, and Vicenta Sierra. "Do customer perceptions of corporate services brand ethicality improve brand equity? Considering the roles of brand heritage, brand image, and recognition benefits." Journal of Business Ethics 154, no. 2 (2019): 441-459.Israel, Glenn D. "Determining sample size." (1992): 2017.Japutra, Arnold, Yuksel Ekinci, and Lyndon Simkin. "Self-congruence, brand attachment and compulsive buying." Journal of Business Research (2017).Kang, Juhee, Aikaterini Manthiou, Norzuwana Sumarjan, and Liang Tang. "An investigation of brand experience on brand attachment, knowledge, and trust in the lodging industry." Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management 26, no. 1 (2017): 1-22.Khan, Zeenath Reza, Gwendolyn Rodrigues, and Sreejith Balasubramanian. "Ethical consumerism and apparel industry-towards a new factor model." (2016): 1.Klein, Jill Gabrielle, N. Craig Smith, and Andrew John. "Why we boycott: Consumer motivations for boycott participation." Journal of Marketing 68, no. 3 (2004): 92-109.Kock, Ned. "Common method bias in PLS-SEM: A full collinearity assessment approach." International Journal of e-Collaboration (IJeC) 11, no. 4 (2015): 1-10.Koku, Paul Sergius, Aigbe Akhigbe, and Thomas M. Springer. "The financial impact of boycotts and threats of boycott." Journal of Business Research 40, no. 1 (1997): 15-20.Levy, Shalom, and Hayiel Hino. "Emotional brand attachment: a factor in customer-bank relationships." International Journal of Bank Marketing 34, no. 2 (2016): 136-150.Li, Yizhi, Can Lu, Vanja Bogicevic, and Milos Bujisic. "The effect of nostalgia on hotel brand attachment." International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 31, no. 2 (2019): 691-717. Limbu, Yam B., Marco Wolf, and Dale Lunsford. "Perceived ethics of online retailers and consumer behavioral intentions: The mediating roles of trust and attitude." Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing 6, no. 2 (2012): 133-154.Lowry, Paul Benjamin, and James Gaskin. "Partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM) for building and testing behavioral causal theory: When to choose it and how to use it." IEEE transactions on professional communication 57, no. 2 (2014): 123-146.Lu, Allan Cheng Chieh, Dogan Gursoy, and Carol Yirong Lu. "Authenticity perceptions, brand equity and brand choice intention: The case of ethnic restaurants." International Journal of Hospitality Management 50 (2015): 36-45.Martins, José, Catarina Costa, Tiago Oliveira, Ramiro Gonçalves, and Frederico Branco. "How smartphone advertising influences consumers' purchase intention." Journal of Business Research 94 (2019): 378-387.McCrae, Robert R., John E. Kurtz, Shinji Yamagata, and Antonio Terracciano. "Internal consistency, retest reliability, and their implications for personality scale validity." Personality and social psychology review 15, no. 1 (2011): 28-50.Mishra, Vivek, and Biswajit Das. "Facilitators of E-Tail Patronage Behavior Among Generation Z Consumers." Indian Journal of Marketing 49, no. 4 (2019): 20-36.Mpinganjira, Mercy, and Daniel K. Maduku. "Ethics of mobile behavioral advertising: Antecedents and outcomes of perceived ethical value of advertised brands." Journal of Business Research 95 (2019): 464-478.Osborne, Jason W., Anna B. Costello, and J. Thomas Kellow. "Best practices in exploratory factor analysis." Best practices in quantitative methods (2008): 86-99.Phung, Minh Tuan, Pham Thi Minh Ly, and Tin Trung Nguyen. "The effect of authenticity perceptions and brand equity on brand choice intention." Journal of Business Research (2019).Popescu, Doina I. "Social Responsibility and Business Ethics: IX. Green Management and Sustainable Development of the Firm." Quality-Access to Success 20, no. 168 (2019).Saini, Shivani, and Jagwinder Singh. "Cultivating Emotional Branding Through Customer Experience Management: From the Holistic Experience Perspective." In Brand Culture and Identity: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, pp. 1346-1361. IGI Global, 2019.Schamp, Christina, Mark Heitmann, and Robin Katzenstein. "Consideration of ethical attributes along the consumer decision-making journey." Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (2019): 1-21.Singh, Jatinder J., Oriol Iglesias, and Joan Manel Batista-Foguet. "Does having an ethical brand matter? The influence of consumer perceived ethicality on trust, affect and loyalty." Journal of business ethics 111, no. 4 (2012): 541-549.Strong, Carolyn. "Features contributing to the growth of ethical consumerism-a preliminary investigation." Marketing Intelligence & Planning 14, no. 5 (1996): 5-13.Summers, Nik. "Ethical consumerism in global perspective: A multilevel analysis of the interactions between individual-level predictors and country-level affluence." Social Problems 63, no. 3 (2016): 303-328.Thomson, Matthew, Deborah J. MacInnis, and C. Whan Park. "The ties that bind: Measuring the strength of consumers’ emotional attachments to brands." Journal of consumer psychology 15, no. 1 (2005): 77-91.Uusitalo, Outi, and Reetta Oksanen. "Ethical consumerism: a view from Finland." International journal of consumer studies28, no. 3 (2004): 214-221.Vitell, Scott J. "A case for consumer social responsibility (CnSR): Including a selected review of consumer ethics/social responsibility research." Journal of Business Ethics 130, no. 4 (2015): 767-774.Vredeveld, Anna J. "Emotional intelligence, external emotional connections and brand attachment." Journal of Product & Brand Management 27, no. 5 (2018): 545-556.Wu, Jintao, Junsong Chen, and Wenyu Dou. "The Internet of Things and interaction style: the effect of smart interaction on brand attachment." Journal of Marketing Management 33, no. 1-2 (2017): 61-75.Yao, Qing, Rong Chen, and Xiaobing Xu. "Consistency between consumer personality and brand personality influences brand attachment." Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal 43, no. 9 (2015): 1419-1427.Yoganathan, Vignesh, Victoria-Sophie Osburg, and Pervaiz Akhtar. "Sensory stimulation for sensible consumption: Multisensory marketing for e-tailing of ethical brands." Journal of Business Research 96 (2019): 386-396. Zaborek, Piotr, and Jolanta Mazur. "Enabling value co-creation with consumers as a driver of business performance: A dual perspective of Polish manufacturing and service SMEs." Journal of Business Research (2019).Zander, Katrin, and Ulrich Hamm. "Consumer preferences for additional ethical attributes of organic food." Food quality and preference 21, no. 5 (2010): 495-503.Zhang, Sha Sandy, Jenny van Doorn, and Peter SH Leeflang. "Does the importance of value, brand and relationship equity for customer loyalty differ between Eastern and Western cultures?." International business review 23, no. 1 (2014): 284-292.