Brand Loyalty and Product Repair: Activating Commitment to Encourage Product Repair

Bio

Jingshi (Joyce) Liu is a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Marketing at the Bayes Business School, City St. George’s, University of London. Her research studies consumer behaviors and wellbeing in various contexts, including income inequality, sustainable consumption, and counterfeit consumption. Her research has been published in top peer-reviewed academic journals, including Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Business Research, Psychology and Marketing, and PLOS One. Her research has been covered by The Conversation U.K., Financial Times, Time Magazine, and other media outlets. Joyce joined Bayes Business School’s Faculty of Management in 2020. She holds a Ph.D. in marketing from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).

Abstract

Product repair is an important part of the circular economy, as it increases the length of product lifecycles and reduces the environmental impact of consumption. Many organizations have started to offer repair services, but there is limited consumer research on product repair decisions. Focusing on the electronic product category, the present research explores the relationship between brand loyalty and consumers’ product repair decisions. Five studies find that, given the frequent availability of new products, brand loyalty reduces consumers’ willingness to repair rather than replace their existing products. This effect is driven by a decrease in the sense of commitment to the existing products. Leveraging on this insight, we design effective messages to promote product repair by highlighting a sense of commitment in repair advertisements (i.e., commitment-focused messages). We find that the proposed commitment-focused messages outperform both the control messages and environment-focused messages in increasing brand-loyal consumers’ repair intentions. Such a proposed strategy is underutilized in the marketplace, as marketers predominantly promote product repair by focusing on its environmental benefits.