What drives your satisfaction? : A quantitative study of satisfaction and loyalty for sustainable brands in a social media context

Abstract: By creating close and long-term relationships between the company and the customers, marketers can succeed in creating brand loyal customers. It has been argued that satisfaction is the main and primary driver to loyalty, researchers argue for different drivers that can enhance customer satisfaction: economic benefit, engagement, entertainment and information. Although satisfaction and brand loyalty has been extensively researched, satisfaction and brand loyalty has not been researched for sustainable brands in a social media context. The purpose of this study was to explain how the combined drivers influence satisfaction and how satisfaction influences brand loyalty in a social media context for sustainable brands. Hypotheses were created for each of the drivers, economic benefit, engagement, entertainment and information, as well as one hypothesis for satisfaction to loyalty. Data was collected in form of an online questionnaire from 253 respondents, whereof 163 followed a sustainable brand on social media and hence, were a part of this study’s population. Economic benefit and engagement were found to not influence satisfaction on a sustainable brand’s social media profile. Entertainment and information were both found to have a positive influence on satisfaction on a sustainable brand’s social media profile. The four drivers tested in this study together explains 30,1% of what influences satisfaction, while 69,9% is explained by other unknown factors. Satisfaction explains 24,2 % of what influences brand loyalty. However, one can not say anything about whether or not satisfaction is the main driver which has the most influence on loyalty, since satisfaction is the only independent variable that was tested in this study.