Exploring Consumer Loyalty and Resistance to Brand Switching: A Social Identity Theory Approach to the Introduction of Disruptive New Brands

Building on what is one of the key concepts in the marketing literature, this conceptual paper investigates how consumer identity, as rooted in social identity theory (SIT), is not only correlated with emotional brand loyalty, but also with the resistance to switching to a new disruptive brand, arguing that: brand loyalty is dependent, to a substantial degree, on the alignment of an established brand with the consumer identity; brand switching is not only a function of price or value, but also of a threatening identity; the branding strategy of a new, disruptive brand faces the challenge of overcoming not only marketplace inertia and strengthening allegiance to existing brands, but also strong cultural roots; as competition for consumer’s social identity against strong, culturally entrenched brand loyalties will be fierce, a consumer will highly resistant to switching brands as doing so incurs not only a loss of monetary value, but emotional and social value as well, providing practical implications, while also calling future empirical studies validate this model and examine how brand loyalty and switching resistance manifest from various industries and cultural context when it comes to true disruptive innovation, thus contributing to the ever-growing understanding of human behavior in the modern marketplace.