Who’s more Brand Loyal – Women or Men?
(A2020-63503)

AUTHORS

John Dawes, University of South Australia; Philip Stern, University of Exeter Business School & Ehrenberg-Bass Institute University of South Australia; Magda Nenycz-Thiel, University of South Australia/Ehrenberg-Bass Institute; Jaap Wieringa, University of Groningen

KEYWORDS

Loyalty; Brands; Gender

ABSTRACT

Many studies have examined the association between gender and brand loyalty. However, much of the evidence on this topic is based on survey results, with little work using actual consumer purchases. Our goal is to examine the impact of gender on behavioural brand loyalty using consumer panel data. We use single-person households to avoid confounds due to family purchasing. We use brand repertoire size and Share of Category Requirements (SCR) given to main brand as the loyalty metrics. We analyse brands in 5 UK consumer packaged-goods categories and present initial, model-free results comparing mean values of these metrics across genders. In contrast to the predominant view in the literature that women are more brand-loyal, we find men are more (behaviorally) brand loyal, albeit not markedly so - with smaller brand repertoires, and larger SCR given to their main brand.