Brand Experience, Engagement, and Loyalty in Iraqi Retail

In Iraqi cities the shopper can buy the same product category from a neighbourhood shop, from a regional chain or from an international brand store, so the question why a customer returns to one brand is a practical one for the retailers there. In this study, the mediating role of customer engagement in the association between brand experience and customer loyalty has been examined in Iraqi urban retail markets, together with the moderating role of perceived value on the association between engagement and loyalty. A cross-sectional survey was carried out with a convenience sample of consumers, mainly in Baghdad, Mosul and Tikrit, where each respondent rated a brand bought in the previous three months. From 300 returns, 263 usable responses remained after the screening for missing data, straight-lining and multivariate outliers. The conditional process model (PROCESS Model 14) was estimated with 5,000 bias-corrected bootstrap resamples. It can be noted from the results that brand experience was positively associated with customer engagement (b = 0.533, p < .001) and with loyalty (total effect b = 0.506, p < .001), and engagement was related also positively to loyalty (b = 0.453, p < .001). The indirect effect of brand experience on loyalty through engagement was 0.242 (95% CI [0.162, 0.334]) and the direct path stayed significant, so the mediation is partial. The engagement × perceived value interaction was positive (b = 0.170, p = .032), and the index of moderated mediation was 0.092 (95% CI [0.008, 0.189]). This means that engagement carries a part of the link between experience and loyalty, and this part becomes larger when the customer judges that the brand gives more for its price. The reliability was acceptable, but the CR and AVE values derived from PCA were low, so the measurement model needs confirmation in later work. For retailers, the results suggest that the spending on brand and store experience returns in loyalty mainly when the quality is consistent and the prices are seen as fair. The data are cross-sectional and the sample is a convenience one, hence the results are read as associations and not as causal effects.