Marketers always try to develop a strong brand that enjoys sustained brand loyalty among consumers. Customer demographics is one of the many factors that would influence brand loyalty. The Indian market for cellphones has witnessed very rapid growth and transformation in recent years. There has been a quantum leap in the availability of features and facilities in the phones, and dramatic changes in consumers’ usage and attitude towards the same. The youth in particular, have caught on to the new technology in a big way, and new cellphone handsets are brought on when the earlier ones become outdated. This paper studies the association between brand loyalty and customer demographics in the context of cellphone handsets. It also revalidates a scale for brand loyalty measurement developed earlier. The study shows that gender, income class and age of cellphone customers play a vital role in developing brand loyalty. The findings of the study have significant implications for cellphone marketers.

Branding has a very important role to play not only in the marketing of products but also in the case of services. Nowadays, consumers demand much more than a basic product, and are willing to switch brands for better product features and improved services. The focus of marketing has therefore shifted from just selling a product to building a strong brand that enjoys customer loyalty. Brand loyalty (i.e., customers’ loyalty towards the brand) is very important to marketers, because loyal customers frequently purchase the same brand, remain longer with the product/brand, commit a higher share of their category spending to the firm, and are more likely to recommend others to become customers of the firm (Reichheld and Sasser, 1990; Zeithaml, 2000; and Keiningham et al., 2007).

In the past, producers sold various commodities or goods to meet basic functional needs. These did not have any identification marks on them. In other words, they were unbranded. The first step towards branding a commodity is to package it. The marketer enhances the value of the commodity’s functionality through packaging. Branding began in a formal way when craftsmen put their trademarks on the products to protect themselves against inferior quality imitations, when artists began signing their art works,and so on. Long ago, David Ogilvy said, “A brand is the consumer’s idea of a product.” A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, design, or the combination of these that identifies the maker or seller of the product or service and also differentiates it from those of the competitors (American Marketing Association’s definition quoted by Aaker, 1995; and Kotler and Armstrong, 2008).

Brand Management Journal, Brand Loyalty, Its Association, Demographics, Consumers, Cellphone Market, Instrument Development, cellphone marketers, Data Collection, India.