Executive Summary 3
Introduction 4
Theoretical Background 4
Brand Love Scales 4
Definition of Love 5
Personality of Brand 5
Image of the Brand 5
Brand Love’s Elements 6
Brand Romance 7
Brand Attitude 7
Brand Loyalty 7
Fashion Brands Love 8
Brand Love in Cell Phone Industry 8
Brand Love Creation by the Companies 8
Apple/Samsung/Huawei 8
PepsiCo 9
Benetton 9
Conclusion 9
BIBLIOGRAPHY 10
Executive Summary
Brand love is a relatively new phenomenon actively discussed by the scholars and marketing professionals. Brand love is necessary for the modern companies to successfully attract and retain their customers. Moreover, it helps to convince clients to pay higher prices for their favorite products and to be resistant to negative information about the brand. Brand love theory is based on the neuroscience and psychological background of human love. This type of love involves similar factors as love between persons. Also, it is noticed that people that are more romantic are more likely to fall in love with product brands. Now many companies, either local or global, are trying to create brand love in their customers. It is possible to observe such efforts on the examples of smart phones, food and beverages, and cloths manufacturers. Brand love is one of the most important elements that help companies to stay competitive and increase profits.
Contemporary Marketing Issue – Brand Love
Introduction
Nowadays in the conditions of rapid economic development it is important for the companies to not only offer a product or service of high quality, but also to create a strong brand in order to remain competitive and retain their market share. Customers can value the brand for different reasons; however, there is still a possibility that they switch to the other brand in view of the lower price, for example. This report is devoted to brand love, which is a contemporary phenomenon broadly discussed by the researchers and marketing professionals, as it is able to retain customers’ positive attitude and make them resistant to the negative information about the brand.
Theoretical Background
Brand engagement foresees a combination of social and experiential dimensions. This means a level of a customer’s individual motivational, context-dependent and brand-related mind state characterized by certain levels of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive activity in brand’s direct interactions (Wallace, Buil and De Chernatony, 2014, p. 33).
As people have various self-schemas, clients exhibit different relations to things that form such schemas, e.g. engagement with shaping their self-concept brands. Products that shape identity of the consumers cause more significant emotional effects. Responses of consumer to brands foresee, for example, brand love, attachment, and loyalty (Wallace, Buil and De Chernatony, 2014, p. 34).
Brand love means the passionate emotional attachment degree that the satisfied client feels towards a specific product. The main thing in all relationships with brand was an affective rich grounding reminiscent of the love concepts in the interpersonal understanding. Clients sometimes experience dependency, obsession, and passion to certain brands, and a “something is missing” feeling in case the brand is not at place. The interpersonal love theory application to the concept of product remains broadly argued among the researchers. Human emotions of love become commitment, yearning, and liking within a context of consumption. Brand love takes place in case product desire extends beyond or reaches a threshold. Even though there are several differences in the brand love conceptualization, yet integration of self-brand is a brand love’s construct. The same as human couples have similar humor and values, relations between product image and self-image increases brand love (Wallace, Buil and De Chernatony, 2014, p. 34).
Therefore, clients can feel love to a brand due to the motives of self-esteem and motives of self-image. Brands that are self-expressive have a positive influence upon love to a brand. Among the young people, connection of self-concept enhances love to brand. Some scholars admit that brand use by consumers expresses either desired or current self-identity. In case the brand contributes to the self-expression of the consumers, they can feel brand love more significantly (Wallace, Buil and De Chernatony, 2014, p. 35).
Brand Love Scales
According to Albert, Merunka and Valette-Florence (2009), regarding the love construct’s measurement, two scales of brand love have been created; however, they are conceptually limited in accordance with love’s definition. Authors’ research main goal is to offer a valid method enabling brand love feeling’s measurement. The obtained solution consists of 7 first order dimensions and 22 items: Pleasure, Uniqueness, Idealization, Intimacy, Duration, Memories, and Dream. These seven factors suggest a solution of second order with two factors named Affection and Passion that corresponds to the newest findings in neuroscience and social psychology regarding interpersonal love. The findings of the authors state that brand love is significantly similar to love between humans. The analysis of statistical information confirms the quality, validity and reliability of the proposed model’s structure. Thus, the scale of brand love foresees three positive behaviors, such as loyalty, positive word of mouth, and trust (Albert, Merunka and Valette-Florence, 2009, p. 305).
Definition of Love
Love is an attitude possessed by an individual toward a certain other individual, involving the trend to behave, feel, and think specifically toward that other individual. Different psychological researches on love have found various styles of love. As such, there is a typology determining six love styles: Ludus, Eros, Pragma, Storage, Agape and Mania. There is also a triangular love theory that includes three components: decision/commitment, passion, and intimacy. The love unidimensional construct was offered too, followed by the development of love passionate scale. Some scholars conceptualized love from a self-expansion point of view. Researchers have suggested a wide variety of measurement items to estimate the love feeling, e.g. caring, trust, concern for well-being of the other, respect, accepting the other and commitment (Ismail and Spinelli, 2012, p. 387).
A conceptual consumer-object relationships model was inspired by love triangular theory, in that three love components (decision/commitment, passion, and intimacy) become decision/commitment, yearning and liking in a context of consumption. Such components contribute strongly to loyalty expressed and felt toward the object of consumption. The authors state that a brand love feeling may exist and customers can have certain relationships with brands. Brand love is a degree of emotional passionate attachment that an individual has for a special trade mark. Love of consumers foresees some characteristics, such as: attachment to brand, brand passion, positive emotions related to the brand, positive brand evaluation, and love declarations toward some brand (Ismail and Spinelli, 2012, p. 388).
Personality of Brand
Among the performed by brands functions there is a relational function, in which the brand is seen as something possessing a personality that makes possible for it to create a consumer relationship. The scale of brand personality includes five dimensions: excitement, sincerity, ruggedness, sophistication, and competence. The authors’ research has been applied using different brands of consumer within various categories of product and across various cultures. Sincerity and excitement are regarded as two basic dimensions that explain most of the variance in brands ratings by persons. Such fact is robust across cultural contexts, product categories, and individuals (Ismail and Spinelli, 2012, p. 388).
Brands of fashion deliver their personalities through the items of clothing directly or through shopping malls, store design, advertising, etc. indirectly. As such, Victoria’s Secret and Levi Jeans elicit a feeling of fashionable, excitement, outgoing and youthful. The fit between a personality of fashion brands and the personality of consumer can have significant implications. It has been offered, for example, that a personality of brand contributes to the equity of brand and can cause a positive brand evaluation by the client. Besides, by purchasing a brand of fashion similar to the actual personality of the consumer, she or he is communicating certain information regarding her/himself. Ismail and Spinelli (2012) argue that the personality of brand may improve the image of the brand, disseminating positive WOM (Word of Mouth) and loving the brand (Ismail and Spinelli, 2012, p. 389).
Image of the Brand
Researchers that study brand management have argued that the image of brand is a powerful brands’ integral part that enables brands to distinct their goods from similar ones. Image of brand is made up of association of brand that is a perceptions’ set regarding a brand as reflected by the associations of brand stored in the memory of the consumers. Brand associations mean the brand’s liabilities and assets category that involve something in memory connected with a brand. Under the associations researchers mean informational nodes connected to the node of brand in people’s memory that includes the brand’s meaning for clients. The image of the product is the result of the interrelations between the product stimuli and the receiver. Among the factors assisting to the brand image’s development there are: attributes of the product, the mix of marketing, the firm, personal values, experience, the brand’s individual perceptions, context variables and brand users type. Image formation sources may be either through brand communication or direct brand experience (Ismail and Spinelli, 2012, p. 389).
Brand Love’s Elements
Prototype. The analysis of Batra, Ahuvia and Bagozzi (2011) includes 10 main components: strongly-held values linkages; high quality; utilization of the preferred brand to express either desired or current self-identity; trust that the brand offers intrinsic and not extrinsic rewards; a feeling of passion and a sense of rightness; positive affect; emotional bond; frequent use and thought; money and time investments; and use’s length (Batra, Ahuvia and Bagozzi, 2011, p. 10).
The theories of interpersonal love applicability to brand love. Some surveyed individuals reported that while they loved certain brands genuinely, it was another love form than interpersonal. People may sometimes compare interpersonal love to brand love in a manner that offered that the prototype of brand love was based partially on their interpersonal love’s understanding; however, also changed to fit a context of consumer. Brand love was usually regarded as a less important compared to the interpersonal love relationship. There were also two other significant differences between those two types. As such, while love that is interpersonal included a strong altruistic concern element for the beloved, it was not discovered in case of brand love. Clients were interested in what the brand might do for them, and not what they might do for it. Also, in the interpersonal healthy relationships, in case people love somebody, they return their love by means of their helpful actions and sometimes experiencing the emotion love towards to the others. To the contrary, surveyed individuals stated that brands do not have emotions, and thus cannot return love of the person in that manner (Batra, Ahuvia and Bagozzi, 2011, p. 15).
Some researchers consider that an antecedent to the emotion of love was the idea that the one which is loved gives something that the individual wants, likes or needs. Similarly, in the prototype of brand love, loved brand aspects are characterized as good qualities/quality will be regarded as antecedents to love of the brand, as individuals are appealed to things that give required benefits, and it is difficult to conceive of love to the brand in the necessary quality’s absence (Batra, Ahuvia and Bagozzi, 2011, p. 19).
The central brand love phenomena would in this case involve various cognitions (for example, regarding self-identity); sense and feelings of fit and connectedness; and behaviors (e.g. resource investments, or frequent interactions) that the authors’ qualitative studies determined as being brand love’s part. As brands cannot be loved not being highly evaluated and liked, these brand love core characteristics have to include also valence of attitude, although love to the brand contains numerous parts that go beyond this valence (e.g. the distinct feelings and self-related cognitions). Brand love should also contain attitudinal strength, involving bigger attitude intensity and extremity, more importance and certainty, and more often talking and thinking about the object of attitude, etc. (Batra, Ahuvia and Bagozzi, 2011, p. 20).
As prototypes work for useful objectives, the authors conceive the prototype of brand love as assisting clients with receiving useful results in their brand relationships. Other scientists discovered that stability of relationship (same as loyalty) is a relational result usual for relationships consistent with love that is prototypical rather than non-prototypical. Thus, the authors conceive consequences of brand love as bigger intentions to repurchase brand, desire to pay a larger amount of money, word-of-mouth positive engagement, and negative information resistance (Batra, Ahuvia and Bagozzi, 2011, p. 21).
Brand Romance
Brand romance can be defined as an emotional attachment that has not yet developed into love to the certain brand. Brand romance possesses three dimensions, such as dominance, arousal, and pleasure.
Consumer–brand relationships and emotional attachment begin with experiencing pleasure by the consumers. The positive feelings association with some brand may be called as pleasure. Ones such positive feelings are strong enough to influence the client in an effective or meaningful way, the second brand romance dimension (arousal) is at place. Arousal and pleasure provide a significant influence on actual purchase behavior of the consumers. Finally, dominance is connected with the brand’s tendency to engage the cognition of the consumers (Kruger et al., 2013, p. 2).
Brand Attitude
The word attitude can mean a context-specific, enduring, relative overall evaluation of specific consumer environment’s aspects, be it a brand, service, or a product. Thus, attitude to brand may be considered an overall consumers’ evaluation of the brand’s ability to satisfy their needs (Kruger et al., 2013, p. 2).
Brand Loyalty
Consumers that are characterized by brand loyalty are confident in their judgments about the brand, committed to the price and value appeal and not sensitive to price, in a way that the same brand is repeatedly bought by them. Loyalty to brand may be considered as being consumers’ systematic and repetitive same brand’s purchase, taking into account the attachment clients have with it and commitment of the consumers to a specific brand (Kruger et al., 2013, p. 2).
According to SARKAR (2011), brand love foresees internal and romantic feelings of a person for any brand. Brand love has two dimensions, e.g. brand passion and brand intimacy. Brand intimacy means the emotional brand liking. Brand passion means the arousal feelings after the contact with some brand or stimuli related to it. Passion and intimacy are correlated reciprocally. Normally such correlation is supposed to be positive. The arousal level will principally depend on the brand experience’s quality that is evoked. A significant role in this regard belongs to the marketing strategies (SARKAR, 2011, p. 89).
Loyalty or commitment is a result of such romantic love to a brand. Clients may view a brand as an individual. Thus, a person can love certain brand, the same as she/he can love some individual. The marketing specialists should be able to create a lovable brand. With the purpose to do it the professional should focus on certain individual-specific and brand-specific variables while marketing strategies’ formulating. Some scholars reported the importance of the individual buying behavior’s experiential aspects. Such buying behavior’s experiential aspects are closely connected to the romantic trait of individual personality and romanticism of the individual enriches the consumption experiential aspects. Thus, a person that is romantic is likely to feel the evoked from a brand or stimuli related to brand experiences at a more significant level in comparison with any person that is not romantic. Advertisements of the brand have to contain a number of romantic themes with the purpose to provoke a romantic feeling towards the brand in the audiences’ mind (SARKAR, 2011, p. 90).
An important role in the post-consumption satisfaction belongs to the brand love context. Long-lasting satisfaction will lead to brand love over time and few satisfied clients will feel it. The background for this is that the satisfaction lasting for a long time most probably will cause delight of the customer that, in turn, influences brand love in a positive way (SARKAR, 2011, p. 90).
Fashion Brands Love
Clients love their brand of fashion, for example, due to the passion that is inspires by it. People would like to be well groomed and well dressed; also they would like to be aware about the modern styles. Generally, brands of fashion are looking to appeal and capture young clients’ markets that want to express themselves by means of fashion. Brands of fashion like Mango, Zara and H&M are now popular globally. Their accessories, jewellery and clothes are reasonably priced and stylish. They win love of numerous young women that have a significant connection with their cloths brands. Thus, clients fall in love with the brands of fashion when they are young. So, there is a solid foundation between people and brands which enable the individuals to provide positive feedback and to announce their thoughts to other customers (Ismail and Spinelli, 2012, p. 388).
Brand Love in Cell Phone Industry
The cell phone industry that is developing very fast now, where there is a constant improve of handsets, requires the consumer-brand relationships forging with the purpose to make consumers loyal to brand and prevent them from purchasing other brands. Brands of cell phones refer to the names with that phones are identified, e.g. BlackBerry, Samsung, and Nokia (Kruger et al., 2013, p. 2).
The emotional connections that clients establish with brands are significant to marketers that want to create with their clients long-term relationships. Romance with brand is of high importance taking into account the fact that it improves customers’ loyalty and can cause brand loyalty more efficiently in comparison with the attitude to brand. In case brand romance provides impact upon brand loyalty and brand attitude, brands of cell phones may elaborate strategies increasing romance to brand with the purpose to establish brand loyalty. In this case people treat their brand similarly to their romantic partner and such relationships are not very expensive for the companies and significantly more profitable for marketers in the long run (Kruger et al., 2013, p. 2).
Brand Love Creation by the Companies
It is possible to observe and analyze the marketing specialists’ effort concerning brand love creation taking the examples of well-known international companies, such as Apple, Huawei, PepsiCo and Benetton.
The companies that manufacture smart phones are competing for their customers using different strategies, including pricing approach.
Apple/Samsung/Huawei
Xiaomi and Apple have lost further basis in the smart phone market that is fiercely competitive, as less popular Chinese brands acquired some part of the market that previously belonged to the former stars of the industry (Fildes, 2016).
The well-known Samsung has also expanded its advantage over the brand of Apple, that sold 32m more devices in comparison with the iPhone during April-June 2016. The figures of the iPhone sales significantly fell recently. They decreased 7.7% to 44.4m items from 48m during the same period in 2015.
The second quarter of 2016 was rather successful for Apple in Eurasia, Eastern Europe and Africa; however, that was offset with a 26% decrease in China’s sales that has been the growth engine of the company (Fildes, 2016).
Huawei is going to establish a large challenge to the other smart phone manufacturers with its new modern devices and good budget for marketing created with the purpose to reach Western clients. This effort may assist with pushing the brand of Huawei in Europe (Thomas, 2016).
The manufacturer stated that its consumer business exposed a 73% increase to $19.9bn during 2015 that it invested into its products’ improvements and increasing popularity as a brand.
Nowadays Huawei is among the largest manufacturers of smart phones in China and is among the top three makers of handsets in 10 countries of Europe (Thomas, 2016).
Globally known snack and drinks manufacturers (e.g. PepsiCo) need to create new images for their products in order to achieve and retain customers’ brand love.
PepsiCo
The power of Pepsi is not in its fizzy traditional beverages (their sales remain flat), but in its drinks like Gatorade that is a sports-drink, the sales of that increased by 30% recently. Gatorade is also an example PepsiCo’s diversification away from sugary colas reliance into other beverages (Economist.com, 2005).
Numerous modern PepsiCo’s brands appeal to people’s lifestyles and health. Latest marketing campaign of PepsiCo offers a symbol of “Smart Spot” that helps consumers with the identification of the healthy goods (Economist.com, 2005).
Cloths brands (like Benetton) often use images that are challenging to the social norms with the purpose to attract and retain clients, especially youth.
Benetton
Since the foundation in 1965, the brand of Benetton has challenged norms of the society and championed things that influence humanity; delivering its views via things that shock, push individuals to think and increase awareness for the thoughts the brand trust to (Chahal, 2015).
Marketing campaigns of Benetton have involved images of the same sex parents; kissing an imam by the pope; individuals affected by poverty or war; and diversity depictions, whether involving gender, religion, or race (Chahal, 2015).
Conclusion
Taking into account the above information, it is not enough to create a brand that offers products and services of high quality and reasonable prices. Almost all of the companies have a lot of competitors that may attract their clients by means of some marketing tricks or price. Therefore modern marketing professionals should think how to create a brand love in their customers. It will make their them not only admiring such products or services, but can also make them resistant to negative information about the brand that will ensure a large and stable market share for the organization.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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