Starbucks coffee as a Veblen good : perceived status enhancement, brand involvement, and brand loyalty
Chee Piong (Author)
Although purchasing products and brands that are perceived to enhance status has become a widespread phenomenon at all socio-economic levels, little is known about how customers perceiving a branded product as status enhancing is related to their brand loyalty and involvement. Companies therefore lack crucial information when deciding whether to use status enhancement as a marketing strategy for their brands and products. This quantitative study helped close the gap in research in this area by investigating whether perceiving the consumption of a particular branded good to be status enhancing was associated with customers' attitudinal and behavioral brand loyalty and their involvement with the brand. By doing so, it went beyond previous research by investigating these relationships for a non-clothing good, for a specific branded product--Starbucks coffeehouse brewed coffee--and by using a sample not restricted to college students. The sample in this study consisted of 170 Starbucks brewed coffee customers from four different Starbucks coffeehouses in South Florida. Customers were engaged via an intercept method on public property near each coffeehouse and asked to participate in the study. Willing participants were administered a brief survey to determine their perceptions of Starbucks brewed coffee as status enhancing; their attitudinal, behavioral, and combined brand loyalty; and their brand involvement. Responses to items were measured on seven-point Likert and semantic differential scales. Reliability and factor analyses confirmed the internal reliability and unitary structure of the multi-item constructs. Linear regressions revealed that customers' perceptions of the branded product as status enhancing were positively associated with their brand involvement (R = .174,p = .023) and their attitudinal brand loyalty (R = .214,p = .005), but not with their behavioral brand loyalty (R = .091, p = .240). These results add to the theory of status consumption by providing information on how perceiving a branded product as status enhancing is related to brand loyalty and brand involvement for a specific branded good. They may also aid companies in deciding whether to use status enhancement as a marketing strategy for their brands and products. Several recommendations for practice and for further research were provided
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2015
ProQuest, LLC, Ann Arbor, MI, 2015