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INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS
1. Introduction
In today‘s intense competitive market, only the competitive advantage product will be
able to survive and continuously gain the demand from the consumers. From the
marketing point of view, competitive advantage can be achieved through a series of
intermediate objectives such as perceived quality, achieving satisfaction, greater
commitment and confidence on the part of customers, as well as a final objective, which
may be to enhance loyalty. Loyalty towards product brand can be derived in many ways.
According to Aaker, 1991, a brand can be defined as distinguishing name or symbol
intended to identify both goods and services. Aaker and Keller, 1990 believe that loyalty
is closely associated with various factors, one of the main ones being the experience of
use.
Customers may be loyal owing to high switching barriers related to technical, economical
or psychological factors which make it costly or difficult for the customer to change. In
another point of view, customers may also be loyal because they are satisfied with the
supplier or product brand, and thus want to continue the relationship (Fornell, 1992).
Research on quality in the automotive industry has started as early in the year 1980s by
the practitioners and academicians. It was evidenced in the past that there was an effect of
product quality and after sale service on a consumer‘s intentions to repurchase vehicles
from the original dealer. Furthermore, these two factors discovered in the marketing and
operations management literature are the key determinants of consumers‘ purchase
intentions (Taylor and Baker, 1994 and Archer and Wesolowsky, 1996). Thus, consumer
perceptions are essential to the definition of the concept of quality. It should be taken into
account that the dynamic of this concept means it will vary depending on these
perceptions, on additional information, on increasing competition for the product type
and on changes in the expectations of consumers (Zeithaml, 1988; Bello and Gomex,
1996).
According to marketing literature, these cues can be classified as extrinsic and intrinsic
(Szybillo and Jacoby, 1974; Zeithaml, 1988). Extrinsic cues are lower level cues that can
be changed without changing the product (e.g. price, packaging, brand name, country of
origin), while intrinsic cues are higher-level cues directly related to the product. One
specific use of some extrinsic cues, such as price, brand name, store name, and country of
origin, is as risk reduction information when purchasing products (Teas and Agarwal,
2000) According to Fandos and Carlos, 2006, the level of perceived quality associated
with intrinsic attributes (e.g. aroma, flavour, texture, natural and carefully prepared
products, etc.) and extrinsic attributes (symbolic factors such as the image of the product,
the region of origin and so on) will have a positive influence on loyalty and product
buying intentions.
Motosikal Dan Enjin Nasional Sdn. Bhd. (MODENAS) has been in existence of more
than 12 years since the year 1996 to manufacture motorcycles and scooters. MODENAS
was created under the national automotive project, which undertook the responsibility to
acquire the technology to manufacture and produce national motorized two wheelers
namely motorcycle and scooter, and small multi-application engines. As until today,
COPY RIGHT © 2011 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 136
JANUARY 2011
VOL 2, NO 9