Effect of Consumer Socialization and Buyer Behavior on Brand and Loyalty of Key Washing Detergents Among Students of Universities in Nairobi Central Business District

Abstract

Consumer socialization is the process through which potential consumers acquire the skills, knowledge and attitude to function in the market place. Different agents of consumer socialization affect brand awareness and loyalty towards different products. These agents include family, peer, mass media and electronic platforms mostly social media. Different consumers exhibit different purchase behavior depending on their needs and wants and is influenced by different factors that include economic, personal socio-cultural and psychological factors. Brand loyalty is the consumer’s devotion to continually purchase a company’s products irrespective of changes in the external marketing environment. Price, perceived quality, performance, availability, brand name and packaging are factors that contribute to brand loyalty. This study seeks to determine the effects of consumer socialization and buyer behavior on brand awareness and loyalty of key washing detergents among students of universities in Nairobi CBD. The study is supported by three theories; the Engell, Kollet Blackwell Model, the Buyer Behavior theory and the theory of Cognitive Dissonance. It adopted a descriptive cross sectional research design. Structured questionnaires were adopted to collect primary data from 600 respondent’s selected using random sampling method. The findings show that all agents of consumer socialization influenced brand awareness and loyalty though to various degrees with E-platforms being the most influential. Purchase behavior was greatly influenced by Economic factors, E- platforms were the major sources of brand awareness and price, quality, performance, availability and brand name were the factors that led to brand loyalty. The study recommends that since social media and E-platforms are the major agents of consumer socialization and awareness, companies should invest in those platforms and especially E-marketing since most of their customers spend a lot of time online. They should also incorporate factors or qualities that enhance brand loyalty into their products to encourage loyalty from their customers.