Investigating brand loyalty of game farmers towards feed manufacturers in the North West Province
Abstract
Branding among game farming feeds is considered to be a very important and valuable asset
for game feed producers in South Africa. Quality feeds and brands lead to a competitive
advantage within the game market. In this regard branding is a competitive advantage in the
highly competitive feed industry, signifying brand recognition and quality for producers in the
marketplace. However, little is known about the customers’ buying patterns and loyalty of game
feed farmers and consumers. At present marketing focuses strongly on price as key element of
the marketing mix because there are general perceptions that brand loyalty is not a competitive
marketing tool in the Feed manufacturing industry. This perception needs to be examined,
confirmed or disrepute to ensure that a feed manufacturer survive in a highly competitive
industry.
The primary objective of this study is to investigate and comprehend the game farmer as
customer when buying game feed, and to determine his or her loyalty to a brand.
The brand loyalty model by Bisschoff and Moolla was used measuring brand loyalty. The
structured questionnaire was adapted for the game industry and employed, to measure the nine
constraints of brand loyalty in the model. The nine constraints include Brand relevance,
Perceived value, Brand trust, Involvement, Family/culture, Commitment, Repeat purchase,
Brand affect and Switching cost/risk aversion.
The data of 92 game farmers, including demographic information were collected using the
structured questionnaire. Data analysis included inferential statistics, reliability testing and
exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to examine the brand loyalty influences. The results indicated
that all the brand loyalty influences have been confirmed by the statistical analysis to be valid
influences to measure brand loyalty in the game ranching industry. The simplified brand loyalty
model by Moolla, can be used when adapted in measuring brand loyalty within the game
ranching industry. Trust and commitment can be isolated as the most important loyalty
influences in terms of decision-making and loyalty amongst game farmers, and external factors
play a small role. The finding of this study is important to the feed producers and their marketing teams, because
customer buying behaviour is better understood, hence could provide a feed manufacturer with
a competitive advantage in a cut-throat industry. In addition, farmers as customers could also
benefit to better understood the concepts of quality and price through brand loyalty whilst
academia could employ the results in further research