Extending the Four-Stage Brand Loyalty Framework in African Telecoms

This paper aims at extending sequential loyalty model by proposing and empirically validating simultaneous and formative re-conceptualizations of the four-stage brand loyalty model within the telecommunication industry in an emerging economy context. The proposed models were tested using data collected from a cross-section of 227 subscribers of four leading multi-national mobile networks in Ghana. A response rate of 67.1% was obtained for data analysis using Partial Least Square (PLS) Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The findings indicate that while consumer loyalty follows a sequential order, from cognitive to affective to conative to behavioural loyalty dimensions, the alternative simultaneous loyalty model and implicit-explicit model appears to better capture the complexity of consumer behaviour, and predicts behavioural loyalty (R2 = 0.60) better than the sequential model (R2 = 0.45). The findings further demonstrate that the proposed formative specification of loyalty could explain loyalty in telecommunications context better than the sequential loyalty model does. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. The paper advances our knowledge on consumer loyalty in telecommunication service contexts.