Jacob Jacoby

"Brand loyal behavior is defined as the overt act of selective repeat purchasing based on evaluative psychological decision processes, while brand loyal attitudes are the underlying predisposition to behave in such a selective fashion."

"The succes of a brand on the long term is not based on a number of consumers that buy it once, but on the number of consumers who become regular buyers of the brand."

"Chaos in Research-land: the sorry status of brand loyalty measurement."

"Our position is that a deterministic orientation can be meaningfully applied to a distinct subset of RPB, a subset we refer to as BL [Brand Loyalty]."

"Before one could speak of brand loyal, one must have the opportunity of being disloyal."

"The present status of brand loyalty research can be characterized as that of a construct undergoing substantial revision and redirection in measurement orientation. From an overly behavioral macro approach, it is gradually making the transition to a more micro understanding of the cognitive mechanisms underlying choice behavior. If brand loyalty is ever to be managed, not just measured, it will have to be elaborated in a much more detailed description of cognitive activities."

"[Brand loyalty is] (1) the biased (i.e., nonrandom), (2) behavioral response (i.e., purchase), (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 brands, and (6) is a function of psychological (decision-making, evaluative) processes"

"If brand loyalty is ever to be managed, not just measured, it will have to be elaborated in a much more detailed description of cognitive activities."

"Although "loyalty" itself is a fertile relationship concept, its nuances have been lost in traditional brand loyalty research. Operationalizations relying on sequence or proportion of purchase perhaps better reflect a notion of inertia than loyalty with its full relational significance. Even well-intentioned attempts to consider loyalty as more than repeat purchase (Jacoby and Chestnut 1978) reduce the process to narrowly cognitive utilitarian decision-making thus failing to capture the talismanic relationships consumers form with that which is consumed (Belk, Wallendorf and Sherry 1989, p.31)"