【正文】 hening the emotional mitment of customers to their brand. Moving customers up a “l(fā)oyalty ladder” through image‐based or persuasive advertising and personal service (recovery) programs are frequently used tactics (Brown, 2000。 White and Schneider, 1998). Loyalty programs are also designed to strengthen mitment and create velvet handcuffs to bond the customer to the brand. This way of thinking has bee monplace in munications, branding and CRM textbooks.Consumers have split‐loyalty portfolios of habitually‐bought brandsAlternatively, advocates of the behavioral focus (Model 2) suggest that most consumers have split‐loyalty portfolios of habitually‐bought brands. Here it is assumed that consumers tend to view advertising and other forms of marketing munication more as publicity that sustains awareness and offers reinforcement, rather than as highly persuasive information that fundamentally changes their attitudes and/or levels of mitment (Ehrenberget al., 1998). While these customers may participate in loyalty programs, they are also thought to be less influenced by these programs than the advocates of Model 1 assume (Dowling and Uncles, 1997). Managers who adopt this approach try to maintain their share of category sales by matching petitor initiatives and avoiding supply shortages, and achieve growth via increased market penetration (by, for example, securing wider distribution). Under these circumstances, a loyalty program might be launched for mainly defensive purposes, in a bid to match petitors or as a publicity generating gesture, but with no expectation of dramatic changes in customer attitudes and behavior.Choice of theory bees importantFor management, the choice of theory bees important when brands peting in a category are functionally similar and marketing budgets are not big enough to fund the tactics implied by all three models. Even where budgets are large – allowing for the simultaneous expansion of the sales base, advertising to encourage more positive beliefs about the brand, and tactical promotions – the need for strategic focus may preclude one or two of these options. For instance, as noted above, the launch of a loyalty program may run counter to the creation of a price‐petitive image (particularly if it is perceived as an unnecessary expense that inhibits price‐cuts from being passed on to customers). In the next section the conceptual implications of these different approaches to customer loyalty are explored.4. Conceptual implications of the different approaches to customer loyaltyLoyalty patterns profile customers, not brandsInFigure 2we use the three models of loyalty to introduce the notion of a loyalty continuum. The anchor points are customer brand mitment (CBC) and customer brand buying (CBB), with customer brand acceptance (CBA) occupying the densely populated middle ground. All these loyalty patterns profile customers, not brandsper se。 that is, consumers are distributed across the curves with respect to their loyalty to a brand. For example, most customers may accept a number of airlines, while a few customers may be mitted to one or two airlines, and some others may buy purely on the price/route bination. These people’s air travel schedules may result in them having quite a few brands in their portfolio. Nevertheless, the nature of the market in which customers buy and brands pete will govern what is normally observed – thus, in highly petitive repeat‐purchase markets acceptance is to be expected more often than the other models. We elaborate below.Brand distinctiveness affectedThe concept of CBA is the base case of customer loyalty in petitive repeat‐purchase markets. It draws heavily on Model 2, but also brings together some elements of Models 1 and 3. The contribution of Model 2 is that customers exhibit loyalty to a number of brands because there is little reason to develop exclusive attitudinal loyalty to any one of the brands purchased. A prime reason for this is that a proliferation of brands in most markets has destroyed one of the key reasons for exclusive loyalty, namely brand distinctiveness. Weilbacher (1993) and Ehrenberget al.(1997) argue that in many product categories, both the functional and the perceived differences among peting brands are small, so it is not surprising that customers perceive few critical and meaningful differences across peting brands. For many of these brands the advertising messages and loyalty programs are fundamentally similar too (pare the similar car hire advertisements in travel magazines or the near‐identical benefits of alternative airline frequent‐flier programs).Need arousal is a trigger to the purchase processFigure 3summarizes the concept of CBA in terms of the familiar five‐stage model of consumer choice. Need arousal is included as a trigger to the purchase process – but this operates mainly on product category decisions, not brand‐based ones. For instance, because of a desire to stay sober the need is for low‐alcohol beer, but not necessarily for any particular brand of low‐alcohol beer. Since this is a model of ongoing CBA for frequently‐purchased products, the (external) information search and evaluation stages are assumed to have been pleted after the initial one or two purchases in the category, and so are not explicitly included in the diagram. Choice among the functionally equivalent alternatives will reflect the accessibility, availability and conspicuousness of a brand at the point of purchase. Most likely, this will be seen as a set of acceptable brands that are ordered as first favorite, second favorite, third favorite, and so forth (Hammond, 1997)[4]. Typically, the relative likelihood of buying each brand will endure over successive purchase cycles, assuming the brands remain functionally adequate and accessible. Satisfaction with past purchases, and any consequential habit formation, explain most of a person’s ongoing propensity to buy one or a number of