Business-to-business branding: a review and assessment of the impact of non-attribute-based brand beliefs on buyer’s attitudinal loyalty

Business-to-business branding has received increasing attention from researchers in the last few years. Nonetheless, there is no agreement on the relative contribution of a brand versus an offering’s functional attributes to the industrial buyer’s preferences. Drawing on models from the business-to-consumer context, this paper demonstrates that non-attribute-based brand beliefs are predictors of hedonic outcomes as measured by industrial buyers’ attitudinal loyalty, while attribute-based brand beliefs are not. Moreover, the moderating role of the buyer’s level of knowledge for the value-generating process is identified, suggesting that the impact of non-attribute-based brand beliefs on attitudinal loyalty is greater for buyers with a low level of knowledge.