THE EFFECTS OF CO-BRAND MARKETING MIX STRATEGIES ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, TRUST AND LOYALTY FOR MEDIUM AND SMALL TRADERS AND MANUFACTURERS

Due to Korea’s recent economic depression, polarised consumption, and intensifying competition, its medium and small traders and manufacturers find it increasingly difficult to compete for sales in the domestic and foreign markets. The reality is that their survival is being threatened by the weakness of their brand power compared to that of large businesses and global enterprises. As the brand has become a key method for identifying products and guaranteeing quality owing to the spread of the Internet, the position of medium and small traders and manufacturers with relatively weak brand power has become tenuous. Accordingly, securing the brand marketing function is becoming a crucial factor for those medium and small traders and manufacturers who wish to leap into the middle ranks through sales increases and business stabilization achieved by market extension. Therefore, this study presents a model that clarifies the effect of the Co-Brand Marketing Mix Strategy when used by medium and small traders and manufacturers on customer satisfaction and loyalty and offers hypotheses to clarify the relationship among variables by examining previous studies on co-brand, the Marketing Mix Strategy, customer satisfaction, trust, and loyalty. The fact that customer satisfaction increases loyalty, thus triggering repurchase intentions and recommendation intentions, will also be verified. This paper is, therefore, clearly different from existing studies targeting large, medium, and small businesses since it focuses on medium and small traders and manufacturers. The significance of this study is in its assertion that the co-brand strategy can become a method for medium and small traders and manufacturers to secure their competitiveness.