The Effect of Loyalty to, Confidence in and Emotional Commitment to Brand Regarding Brand Advocacy in Shiraz Namazi Hospital

Brand can impart a unique meaning of the organization to consumers and create many comparative advantages. This relationship is created through trust, connection, loyalty and emotional commitment to the brand and their impact on advocacy and the development of emotional relationships between the customer and the organization. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of loyalty to, confidence in and emotional commitment to brand regarding brand advocacy.

This research was applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey in terms of data collection method. Data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire whose face validity was confirmed by professors and experts.  Convergent validity with a mean variance of more than 0.5 and divergent validity using Fornell and Larker methods were confirmed. Also, the reliability of the instrument was confirmed with the Cronbach's alpha of more than 0.7. The statistical population was patients of Shiraz Namazi Hospital in 2020. After conducting a pre-test and confirming the validity and reliability and determining the variance deviation of the prototype, using Cochran's formula, the statistical sample size was determined to be 300. The final questionnaires were distributed and collected among patients through convenience sampling method. Finally, after data analysis, the conceptual model of the research was fitted using the structural equation model and PLS3 software.

The conceptual model of the research was fitted using various indicators and the results showed that the model has appropriate quality and acceptable validity. Quantitatively, findings indicated that brand confidence of 0.228 had a significant effect on brand advocacy, but emotional commitment and loyalty with a coefficient of 0.049 and 0.007, respectively, had no significant effect on brand advocacy.

Results suggest that brand confidence is achieved by patients through perceived quality, brand credibility and customer-oriented behavior of the hospital staff. Moreover, the influence of reference groups and the social responsibility on the hospital, with the help of confidence in brand, creates emotional commitment in patients.