Marketing and Branding Research

Gaining customer loyalty is key to achieving repeated purchases that have ripple effects on sale revenue, market penetration, and profitability for firms. Can brand attachment guarantee customers’ loyalty? Based on the assumptions of the theory of customer equity, the study evaluated the interactions of brand attachment, customer loyalty, customer equity, and customer loyalty, focusing on Nigeria's telecommunication industry. A survey-based approach to research with 1,035 active subscribers of five telecommunication companies in Nigeria was examined. Regression analysis was used to test the four-way hypotheses formulated in the study. Overall, the result showed that brand attachment had a positive and significant effect on customer loyalty. However, the link between brand attachment and customer loyalty was explained through customer trust to suggest a full mediation effect. Further analysis revealed that customer trust explained significant variation in customer equity. The study concluded that customer trust is a critical factor in achieving the benefit of brand attachment and customer equity. The study recommended that the management of the telecommunication companies in Nigeria invest significant resources to secure their customers' trust and adhere to the dimension of value, brand, and relationship equity given their concomitant effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Conventional shopping affords the customer the convenience of not losing their monies to
hackers and scammers and carrying out a transaction in a familiar shop environment,
irrespective of the shop location. The unprecedented development in telecommunication/
Information Communications Technology (ICT) has made direct purchase and sale of goods
and services possible worldwide using the Internet, an online shopping website in Nigeria. For
example, many customers and prospects engage in multi-billion Naira transactions daily in
Jumia.com.ng and konga.com. The essence of trust in this platform becomes inevitable, based
on the virtual nature of all transactions. This study aims to examine the effect of customer trust
and purchase decisions on online shopping in Nigeria. The study clarifies that internet hopping
could flourish easily where there is less risk factor, proof of effective service quality delivery,
and unbridled evidence of trust in the service providers' ability to deliver. The descriptive
methodology was adopted for the study, and 277 questionnaires were administered to
respondents, mainly online customers of jumia.com.ng. Correlation analysis was used to
analyze the underlying variables of the study. The results revealed that there is a positive
interrelationship between online shopping and trust in Nigerian. The study concludes that online
service providers need to entrench trust amongst customers and exclude all risk factors that
could be inimical to the growth and development of online hopping in Nigeria