THE IMPACT OF MARKETING INNOVATION ON CUSTOMER LOYALTY: THE MEDIATİNG ROLE OF BRAND IMAGE AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION (A CASE STUDY IN CHEMICAL INDUSTRY)

Abstract

Marketing innovation is extremely important for companies to create an advantage, especially in highly competitive industries. Because high competition requires the ability to make accurate and timely innovations to keep up with the rapid change. Innovation has a positive effect on profitability and performance, but it is very difficult to ensure its continuity. Loyalty, on the other hand, is the result of intense efforts that require long periods, unlike innovation. Loyalty is very important for companies to live longer under heavy competition. While innovation plays an important role in influencing consumer trends, loyalty is about maintaining those trends. Managing frequently changing customer preferences correctly and achieving this by creating loyalty is the biggest challenge for companies. This research examines the interaction between innovative activities, which are fast and represent change, and customer loyalty, which takes long and difficult processes to create, in a large-scale company operating in the chemical industry, through the concepts of image and satisfaction. The results show that the direct effect of marketing innovation on loyalty is not significant, but the effects over image and satisfaction mediators are significant. The research confirms the mediating role of image and satisfaction in the innovation-loyalty relationship.