*Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: zarepoor313@gmail.com (E. Zarepour Nasirabadi) © 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi: 10.5267/j.msl.2013.06.038 Management Science Letters 3 (2013) 1907–1914 Contents lists available at GrowingScience Management Science Letters homepage: www.GrowingScience.com/msl A study on relationship of brand characteristics and customer satisfaction with brand loyalty Ebrahim Zarepour Nasirabadi a* and Mohsen Nazem Bokaei b a Department of Business Management, Science and Research Branch Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran b Department of Business Management, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran C H R O N I C L E A B S T R A C T Article history: Received March 12, 2013 Received in revised format 10 June 2013 Accepted 22 June 2013 Available online June 25 2013 Brands are considered as valuable assets of a company both economically and strategically. Thus, having customers who are loyal to a brand is one of the main goals of businesses companies. Identifying and anticipating the customers’ needs are vital to the enterprises gaining competitive advantage and market segmentation. Maintaining and enforcing customers’ loyalty is a strategic challenge for companies seeking to keep and promote their competitive status in the market. High brand loyalty of the customers generates competitive advantage for the company and it increases the income and decreases the costs of marketing. In addition to increasing the market share, loyalty allows to ask for higher prices compared with its competitors. This study seeks to investigate the factors influencing customer loyalty to sport brands. The statistical population of this research was Tehran city. Using simple cluster sampling, 502 customers of four known brand sports, i.e. Nike, Puma, Adidas, Reebok, and Fila were chosen. Furthermore, a questionnaire, which assessed seven variables including reputations, brand name, brand image, brand loyalty, customer satisfaction, promotion and the price was used and the hypotheses were analyzed using statistical tests such as Kolmogorov- Smirnov test (K-S test), Spearman correlation, simultaneous linear regression and binomial test. The findings suggested that the brand name has a strong correlation with brand loyalty. Moreover, variables such as reputation, brand image, customer satisfaction, price and promotions also have positive and significant effect on the brand loyalty. © 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Brand Loyalty Brand Name Corporate Reputation Promotion Price Brand Image Customer Satisfaction 1. Introduction Many companies, especially those working in the sports industry normally try to increase brand loyalty of their customers. Brand loyalty is a conscious or unconscious decision realized in consistent purchase intention or behavior of a particular brand. Brand loyalty is the primary objective of marketing (Reichheld & Sasser, 1990). In marketing, brand loyalty entails consumer's commitment to re-purchase, using other services and learning positive behaviors towards the brand. This means that the decision to re-purchase depends on factors such as trust and performance, product quality and services (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001).