One of the first to recognize this importance were Howard and Sheth (1969). Since then, many have discussed the role of loyalty in the brand equity process. His findings indicate that brand loyalty could create marketing advantages, in this respect, reduced marketing costs, an increase of new customers and greater trade leverage. Other advantages from loyalty include favorable word of mouth and an increase in the resistance among loyal customers toward competitive strategies (Dick and Basu, 1994).
Brand loyalty, however, is not as straight forward as it seems. Chauduri et al (2001) define brand loyalty "as a deeply held commitment to re-purchase or re-patronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future ", this behavior will cause same-brand or same brand-set buying behavior while ignoring the situational influences and marketing efforts meant to cause switching behavior. This definition, just like many of the previous works on this topic, shows the two different aspects of brand loyalty clearly " behavioral and attitudinal. Purchase loyalty, behavioral, is focused on repeated purchases of the brand, attitudinal brand loyalty is more focused on the dispositional commitment with regards to the unique value associated with the brand (Chauduri et al (2001)).
This issue, of brand loyalty, is closely linked to any type and area of marketing. Any company that wants to survive needs to ensure that customers keep coming back and keep spending money. This is obviously the case for Business to Consumers (B2C) marketing, but also for Business to Business (B2B) marketing because B2B firms not always have many customers. Some B2B companies even have 70% to 80% of their business from one or two customers (for example, a company producing bumpers for a car usually only does this for one or two different car manufacturers).
Two different aspects exist with regard to brand equity " from the viewpoint of the firm and that of the consumer.