وفاداری نسبت به برند در میان دانشجویان در عرصه ی تغییر سریع مد Factors affecting college students’ brand loyalty toward fast fashion

Introduction Brand equity is regarded as a very important concept in business practice as well as in academic research because marketers can gain competitive advantages through strong brands (Aaker, 1996a; Anselmsson et al., 2017; Çifci et al., 2016; Keller, 1993, 2008). Previous research has focused on understanding how to build, measure, and manage brand equity (Farquhar, 1989; Jara and Cliquet, 2012; Keller, 2008; Netemeyer et al., 2004; Sasmita and Suki, 2015; Tong and Hawley, 2009; Washburn and Plank, 2002). Developing further insights into brand equity and its consequence is important in the face of the prominence of branding due to the fact that almost every marketing activity works, successfully or unsuccessfully, to build, manage, and exploit brand equity (Aaker, 1991; Keller, 1993, 2008; Yoo and Donthu, 2001). If consumers perceive a particular brand favorably, the consumers may have higher tendency to be loyal, which is demonstrated by the intention to buy the brand as a primary choice; and then, the firm may have a competitive advantage in the market. Hence, it becomes vital for managers to have a better understanding of the concept of brand equity and their impacts on consumer’s brand loyalty for an enriched practice of brand management. Fast fashion has experienced a decade of blistering growth and is fast becoming the way of the retail world as more and more brands move to the model and the concept has now been adopted in one form or another by virtually all the key players in the global fashion industry and market (Barnes and Lea-Greenwood, 2010, 2013; Caro and Martínez-de-Albéniz, 2015; Choi, 2014). Business idea behind fast fashion brand is always based on fashion, quality and the right price (Ilonen et al., 2011). Fast fashion is defined as a business model which provides the latest fashion trends along with agile response to consumer demand with reasonable prices (Choi, 2014; Jin et al., 2012). Fast fashion business model brought fresh air into the global textile and apparel industries and the fact that most fast fashion companies outperform non-fast fashion firms highlights the success and attractiveness of this approach. Apparel brands like H&M from Sweden and Zara (the flagship brand of the Spanish retail group Inditex) are classic example of fast fashion (Fernie et al., 2010), have established themselves as recognized global brands (Interbrand, 2017) and have grown to become the largest apparel companies in the world (Caro and Martínez-de-Albéniz, 2015; Jin et al., 2012).