Antecedents and consequences of brand attachment: A literature review and research agenda

Consumers develop powerful connections with brands and they feel a strong bond or attachment to favourite brands that can lead to re-purchase behaviour, reduced price sensitivity and increased customer loyalty. Gaining greater in-depth knowledge of brand attachment offers a powerful means of understanding and facilitates modelling the mechanisms for achieving greater profitability and increased revenue for firms. The purpose of this paper is first to map the antecedents, mediators and consequences of brand attachment; second to provide scholars with a map of prior research as a starting point for future research; and third to offer insights to extend understanding of how consumers relate to and engage with brands. The antecedents to brand attachment are categorized under five headings: brand-related concepts; self-brand connection and connection; congruence and the self; emotional drivers of brand attachment; and service-related concepts. The consequences of brand attachment are categorized as: brand loyalty and switching resistance; purchase intentions and willingness to pay; and word of mouth. The review and future research agenda utilize the Theory, Context, Characteristics, Methodology structure: (T) theory and concepts; (C) context and industry sectors; (C) characteristics (antecedents, mediators and consequences); (M) methods used in prior research. Recommendations focus on: social media marketing; social media marketing influencers and psychological ownership.     

Determinants of customer brand loyalty in the retail industry: A comparison between national and private brands in South Korea

Finding motivations for customer brand loyalty is one of the most popular academic and practical research fields; in this regard, some scholars have explored motivations in the retail industry. As the concept of private brands has been one of the most widely employed strategies for business success in the industry, comparing private and national brands in terms of customer loyalty is an important topic in the retail industry. Thus, the current research focuses on exploring antecedents of customer loyalty in private and national brands, as well as investigating whether there are notable structural differences between the brands. The results, based on 1,631 responses, indicate that customer perceived service/product quality, satisfaction, trust, and cost are notable determinants of brand loyalty, while the relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality of private brands is not supported. Moreover, both indirect and direct effects of the employed factors on customer brand loyalty are reported.     

“I won't leave you although you disappoint me”: The interplay between satisfaction,investment, and alternatives in determining consumer–brand relationship commitment

While commitment is among the key constructs of consumer–brand relationships, past research has regarded the impact of predictors of brand commitment as being linear and has ignored potential interactive effects among the different antecedents. Applying the investment model of interpersonal relationship, the present research examines the dynamic interplay among the key determinants of consumers' commitment to their relationship with brands (satisfaction, alternatives, and investment) and substantiates the roles of the antecedents in consumer–brand relationship contexts. Results of two studies demonstrate that greater consumer satisfaction and investment and less attractive alternatives lead to a higher level of consumers' commitment to their relationship with a brand. Most important, the results suggest that the perceived size of investment exerts a stronger impact on brand relationship commitment when satisfaction is low while making no significant difference in the commitment level when satisfaction is high. Conversely, the influence of alternative attractiveness on brand relationship commitment appeared to be largely monotonic. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Store brand and national brand promotion attitudes antecedents

Retailers compete against national manufacturers by launching store brands. National manufactures regularly use brand promotions to fight store brands back. The purpose of this article is to find out whether attitudes toward national brand promotions and store brands have similar or different conceptual antecedents. The study presents and tests a model of the effects of shoppers´ characteristics (price and non-price-related) on attitudes toward store brand and national brand promotions. The results support that constructs relating to price impact both store brand attitude and national brand promotion attitude, but the strength of some of these relationships differ. Other shopper characteristics like brand loyalty and store loyalty, have similar negative and positive effects, respectively. These slight differences suggest that promotions of national brands might be a good tool for fighting back store brands, but manufacturers need to design and target these promotions carefully in order to avoid head-to-head competition.     

Store brand and store loyalty: The moderating role of store brand positioning

Despite extensive research, the relationship between store brand loyalty and store loyalty remains uncertain. Recent research suggest a nonmonotonic relationship between store brand loyalty and store loyalty: positive up to a certain store brand loyalty level, after which it becomes negative (inverted U). However, existing arguments suggest this relationship may relate to the competitive positioning of store brands, especially their price?Cquality positioning. The more quality-oriented the store brand positioning, the more favorable the effect of store brand loyalty appears to be on store loyalty. An empirical study, focused on retailers that simultaneously offer several store brands with different price?Cquality positions, corroborates this proposition. The store brand loyalty level at which store brand loyalty induces a negative effect on store loyalty occurs earlier when the store brand positioning stresses price instead of quality.     

The “little emperor” and the luxury brand: How overt and covert narcissism affect brand loyalty and proneness to buy counterfeits

The authors build on approach‐avoidance motivations theory to investigate the relationship between narcissism and luxury brand consumption. Narcissistic consumers, that is, those showing excessive conceit, are prone to consuming high‐prestige products and are thus attractive targets for luxury brands. Yet despite research in psychology distinguishing two types of narcissism, overt (or grandiose) and covert (or vulnerable) narcissism, little is known about how luxury consumption varies by these forms of narcissism. This paper focuses on Chinese Generation Y consumers to examine how overt and covert narcissism differ in their effects on luxury brand loyalty and proneness to purchase counterfeits as well as the moderating role of brand‐image self‐image congruity on the relationship between overt/covert narcissism and brand loyalty. Findings highlight the need for marketers to understand narcissistic targets more clearly in order to develop successful strategies to foster brand loyalty and diminish counterfeit consumption.     

Involvement, satisfaction, and brand loyalty in a small business services setting

Considerable resources are expended annually on building business brands, yet the literature is virtually silent on brand loyalty in a business setting. This study examines the relationship between attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty in a business services context, and attempts to identify two key antecedents of loyalty in this context. In particular, little is known about small businesses as customers, despite their significant contribution to the economies of developed nations. A longitudinal design is implemented, and data are captured on both attitudinal loyalty and subsequent loyalty behaviors (i.e., actual purchase behavior). The findings demonstrate the value of conceptualizing and measuring both attitudinal and behavioral components of brand loyalty. Specifically, the results indicate that attitudinal loyalty mediates the effects of the antecedents studied (category involvement and purchase satisfaction) on behavioral loyalty. Implications for marketing theory and practitioners are discussed, and possible directions for future research are sketched.     

Exploring the Importance of Gay‐friendliness and its Socialization Influences

Gay men and lesbian consumers are increasingly representing a desired target audience for brands seeking to build brand loyalty in an under‐tapped market. The existing literature on marketing to gay men and lesbians suggests that brands targeting this market should position themselves as gay‐friendly. Nevertheless, little is known about consumer perceptions of gay‐friendliness, its antecedents or the socialization processes relevant to establishing a brand's gay‐friendly claim. This paper attempts to fill this void by reporting the results of a survey of gay men and lesbian consumers. The survey assessed the factors involved in perceptions of gay‐friendliness, socialization sources and the relationship between gay‐friendly brand claims and attitudes towards the brand.     

Antecedents of emotional attachment to brands

Marketers desire exclusive brand repurchase. This can occur when customers develop deep emotional “bonds” with brands, as elaborated in the emotional attachment to brands construct. To create emotionally attached repurchase, marketers must understand controllable antecedents of the phenomenon. However, a comprehensive study of antecedents is missing from the literature. We use qualitative methods to derive five primary antecedents of emotional attachment to brands. Our summary model allows for simultaneous operation of multiple antecedents, as we consistently observed in our data. We offer applied suggestions for leveraging antecedents to evoke exclusive repurchase based on emotional attachment to brands.     

Consumer Brand Loyalty in the Chilean Wine Industry

Worldwide, the wine industry has become tremendously competitive, with new world wine countries, such as Chile, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa becoming relevant players. Consumers are increasingly offered a broad range of wine brands in supermarkets, restaurants, and wine stores. Consequently, wine marketing managers are required to develop strategies for building consumer brand loyalty for their own wines. This study attempts to investigate this issue and tests a model of antecedents of wine brand loyalty with 300 consumers from Chile, a new world wine producer. Results are analyzed with structural equation modeling (SEM). Our results indicate that wine brand satisfaction has the strongest relationship with wine brand loyalty. Additionally, wine experience is positively related to brand trust and brand satisfaction.     

Brand Loyalty and Price Promotion Strategies: An Empirical Analysis

Though brand loyalty has been studied extensively in the marketing literature, the relationship between brand loyalty and retail pricing strategies is not well understood. Designing promotion strategies involves two key decisions: the percentage reduction in price from the existing price point (depth), and the frequency with which a product is promoted. These decisions, in turn, are critically dependent upon how many consumers can be convinced to switch to a brand by temporarily reducing its price, and how many are instead brand loyal. Theoretical models of how the strength of brand loyalty influence optimal promotion strategies have been developed, but there are no rigorous tests of their hypotheses that take into account wholesale price variation. We test how brand loyalty impacts promotion strategies for two frequently purchased consumer packaged good categories. Our results confirm that retailers promote strong brands shallower and more frequently compared to brands with weak loyalty. Our results highlight the importance of carefully modeling wholesale prices when testing behavioral models on retail pricing.     

Brand Attachment and Consumer Emotional Response to Unethical Firm Behavior

Attaching consumers to a brand is a cornerstone of relationship marketing as attachment increases loyalty. This research investigates another possible benefit of attachment, its potential and limits for shielding brands from firms’ ethical missteps. Merging motivated reasoning and attachment theories, two studies focus on how brand attachment influences consumer judgments of firm ethics and the emotional and behavioral consequences developing from those. A field study indicates that attachment attenuates judgments of unethical behavior, contributes to emotional ambivalence, and affects purchase intentions. A subsequent experiment corroborates these findings and shows that the buffering role of attachment is limited to conditions when the information about firm ethics is moderately rather than extremely negative. Implications focus on advancing research on ethics and emotional ambivalence in consumer brand relationships and on managerial implications.     

The persistence of excess brand loyalty over multiple years

This study examines the extent to which packaged-goods brands exhibit excess loyalty over a multi-year period. Brand loyalty for 300 brands in 20 UK product categories are compared to theoretically expected loyalty levels calculated using the Dirichlet model. Results show that while many brands show excess loyalty in a particular year (31%), fewer of them (25% and 22%) exhibit excess loyalty over 2 and 3?years, respectively. Almost all the brands that do show persistent excess loyalty are private-label brands or are market-share leaders (either the biggest or the second-biggest brand in the market). Therefore, excess loyalty over multiple years is a rare occurrence for a brand unless it is a market leader or a private-label brand. The study also shows that 38% of all high-share brands have consistent excess loyalty, and 37% of all private-label brands have consistent excess loyalty. These results suggest that existing explanations in the literature as to the sources of excess loyalty need further investigation. The reason is that those explanations relate to distribution effects, which should be similar across such brands. They therefore imply that most high-share and private-label brands should exhibit excess loyalty. The study suggests several avenues for further research to identify the reasons why some high-share or private-label brands show excess loyalty and others do not.     

The moderating effect of individual level collectivist values on brand loyalty

In today's dynamic business environment the success of a firm often depends on its ability to create brand loyalty. While there is a large body of research exploring brand loyalty and its antecedents, little has been done to examine how the relationship between these antecedents and brand loyalty is moderated by consumer differences in individual level collectivist values. This understanding is important however as consumers high in individual level collectivist values have been found to make different brand choices than consumers low in individual level collectivist values. We develop and test theory that suggests consumer differences in individual level collectivist values have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between perceived value, perceived quality, brand trust and brand loyalty. The results show that consumers high in individual level collectivist values are significantly more loyal to a focal brand, especially when brand trust and perceived quality are at relatively low levels.     

Creation of consumer loyalty and trust in the retailer through store brands: The moderating effect of choice of store brand name

Within the current economic context, store brands play an important role in differentiation strategies based on assortment and positioning in terms of distributor prices. To begin with, this study identifies three determining aspects of retail loyalty and trust: satisfaction with price levels, the perceived image of the assortment and loyalty to the store brands (SB). Secondly, this study proposes a theoretical relational model among the aforementioned aspects. Finally, this study analyzes the moderating role that the strategy of choosing SB name (umbrella brand label vs. brands different from the label brand) plays in the relationship between loyalty to SB and loyalty to and trust in the retailer. By including this moderating variable, we seek to contribute to current academic research and to provide insights into the importance that SB strategy (label vs. own name) has for the effect of loyalty to SB on the relative results of the retail company. Our research results show that making the umbrella SB name the same as the label brand name increases the positive effect of customer loyalty to SB on loyalty to the retailer, but not the effect of trust on this loyalty compared to chains that use SB names different from those of the label. These results have important implications for management.     

The role of actual,ideal, and ought self‐congruence in the consumption of hedonic versus utilitarian brands

To emotionally attach consumers to a brand and inspire brand loyalty, marketers often target the brand personality towards the consumer's actual or ideal self. The self is not limited to its actual and ideal dimension, however, and motivation to approach a desired self may vary depending on the consumer's personality. Thus, the current research is the first to link self‐congruence to self‐discrepancy theory by incorporating the ought self into the self‐congruence framework and taking into account self‐discrepancies as potential moderators of the self‐congruence effect. Additionally, hedonic brand nature is discussed as important condition for self‐congruence and self‐discrepancies exhibiting their fullest effect. The conducted study focuses on how actual, ideal, and ought self‐congruence influence emotional brand attachment and consequently brand loyalty. For brands of primary hedonic nature, findings confirm actual and ideal self‐congruence as drivers of emotional brand attachment, which in turn increases brand loyalty, while ought self‐congruence influences brand loyalty directly. Moreover, self‐discrepancies moderate the described relations, albeit their effect is contrary to theory‐based expectations. From these findings, the authors derive important implications for business practice and future research.     

Personality,person–brand fit,and brand community: An investigation of individuals,brands, and brand communities

Abstract

Brand communities have received considerable and warranted attention from marketing researchers and practitioners. Brand communities can be important sources of information for both the firm and other customers, and they play an important role in building and maintaining strong brands. Nevertheless, the antecedents of brand community identification, such as individual differences across consumers in the propensity to connect with brand communities, are not as well understood. We hypothesise that the enduring personality traits extraversion and agreeableness predict identification with the [brand] community, which in turn, and along with product attachment, will be related to brand trust and brand loyalty. Product attachment itself is hypothesised to be a function of person–brand congruity, the perceived fit between the person and the brand. Those relationships are tested and supported in data from a sample of 662 car enthusiasts attending a large brand community meeting or ‘brandfest’.     

Building brand credibility: The role of involvement,identification, reputation and attachment

The aim of this study is to propose a conceptual framework for building destination brand credibility. This research proposes a novel framework to explore the antecedents of destination brand credibility based on four constructs: enduring culture involvement, destination brand identification, destination brand reputation and destination brand attachment. The data used to assess the proposed research model was collected through in-person-administered surveys conducted in Indonesia and Spain. The study shows that destination brand credibility is influenced by enduring cultural involvement, destination brand identification and destination brand reputation. In addition, destination brand attachment partially mediates the relationship between destination credibility and the three antecedents. The findings contribute to the relevant literature by improving the knowledge of the antecedents of destination brand attachment and destination brand credibility.     

Brand Actions on Social Media: Direct Effects on Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) and Moderating Effects of Brand Loyalty and Social Media Usage Intensity

Most existing social media research has been user focused. This study looks at social media from the brand's perspective by testing (1) theoretical links between brand-action antecedents and positive electronic word of mouth (eWOM); and (2) how brand loyalty and social media usage intensity moderate the relationships between the antecedents and eWOM. Using structural equational modelling from 290 Facebook users, we find empirical support for three brand action constructs (personalization, responsiveness, and transparency) to eWOM. We also find the moderating effects of social media usage intensity and brand loyalty on the relationship between responsiveness and eWOM. Theoretical and managerial implications for these findings are discussed.     

Some antecedents and outcomes of brand love

Survey research is employed to test hypotheses involving brand love, a new marketing construct that assesses satisfied consumers’ passionate emotional attachment to particular brands. Findings suggest that satisfied consumers’ love is greater for brands in product categories perceived as more hedonic (as compared with utilitarian) and for brands that offer more in terms of symbolic benefits. Brand love, in turn, is linked to higher levels of brand loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. Findings also suggest that satisfied consumers tend to be less loyal to brands in more hedonic product categories and to engage in more positive word-of-mouth about self-expressive brands.