The Impact of Brand Love on Consumer-Brand Relationships

Introduction

Brand love is the psychological aspect that tends to influence loyalty, association, and awareness of the brand among the consumers. The elements of the brand love in context with the study conducted by different researchers and methods adopted by them while conducting it and findings of the research conducted by them along with the different phases of brand love will be discussed in this essay.

Brand Love and its elements

It is a marketing strategy that tends to achieve brand loyal customers and convert them into influencers for the brand to achieve customer satisfaction and value. According to Keller (2019), the main elements of brand love include customer value, customer satisfaction, self –identity, intrinsic rewards etc. these will be explained for better understanding. Customer Value is a strategy that showcases the value of a product to ensure that this is communicated properly and is craved for by the target audience. To some, it may be the price of the product. It can also be defined as the value that something has which makes it more desirable. To create customer value it is necessary to keep these things in mind. Price should be set by the benefit that a customer believes that he/she will be deriving from the product. Providing something extra after reducing or charging the same price it could serve better for grabbing customer attention. Make the product more convenient to purchase. Making customers feel more valued by providing solving customer problems in a short period, providing better after-sale services, etc this leads to customer satisfaction (Palusuk et. al., 2019). Customer satisfaction is a communication strategy used for explaining to a potential customer how the product will be useful to satisfy the needs of the customer.

Next element is self-identity is the way customers reflect themselves through a particular brand it can be both direct relations with the product or service offered by the organization or brand facilitating interpersonal relations with the brand. Intrinsic reward is also one of the elements of the brand love which means an incentive that has been given to the consumer of the product. It is the internal reward that a customer gets after consuming the product and services of the company. Emotional bonding is the feeling of being bonded with the brand through emotions is another element of brand love. Additionally, customer needs to feel a strong desire towards the brand even feeling strong separation anxiety. Willingness to invest is that element of brand love which focuses on the concept that customer should invest a high level of time and money into the brand, these investments should highlight the importance of the brand for deeper consumer identity which increases the attachment toward the brand. Frequency of use for the brand to be more relevant the customer must engage with the product more frequently. The attitude and experience of the customer are strongly held as it affects the cognitive consistency which leads to faster responses.

Research on Brand Love

The study conducted by Batra, Ahuvia, and Bagozzi (2016), consisted of making 70 Telephonic interviews which lasted for around 10 to 60 minutes the main age group of respondents fall between 23 and 45 years of age. The first study showcased all types of non-interpersonal relationships relating to the brand it was found that more than 96% claimed to love something other than a person. Whereas the second study focused especially on the loved brands like Apple, and Microsoft it included 18 detailed interviews which lasted for around 2 hours in which customers discussed brands of their choosing in various categories. This study found that 89% put one brand into love and 100% claimed to love one brand. The main limitation of this research is that it lacks explanatory studies and subsequent development of theory. Brand love is short-term as it is single, specific, and akin to affection, whereas interpersonal can lasts for a decade and may involve many behavior and cognitive experience. As many studies which followed the main concept of research conducted by Batra is that it only considers a small part due to which the relationship of brand love tends to stay in its early stage and require a need for further studies.

According to Bairrada, Coelho and Coehlo (2018), the study conducted by Batra, Ahuvia, and Bagozzi (2016), tends to identify a few variables which tend to predict consumer buying power these factors may include brand experience, personality, which are only symbolic attributes that lead to two major problems assuming that brand love and interpersonal love are equal According to Shariq (2018), instead of studying the brand love in an open-ended manner it chooses theory of interpersonal love. As per the theory brand love is not a real type of love, there are many different types of interpersonal love like parental, romantic, and sibling.

The phase of Brand Love

In many types of research, it has been shown that consumers not only interact with the brand but also engage in a relationship just like a normal relationship from the initial meeting to all the way to decline or demise Know Brand The consumer relationship starts with a particular brand there should be a full understanding about the brand and what makes it better or special there should be a clear definition to set the more intimate bond. Brand Type every brand has an ideal customer someone that connects with the brand the main goal for the marketer is to identify those ideal customers and fulfill their emotional and social needs. Meet memorably The first meeting between the brand and customer showcases the main relationship and has the potential to remain in the acquaintance phase to establish a connection that is more memorable so that consumer desire. Making it mutual with consumer and brand there is no difference in this stage there is a need to identify the category of influences of consumer that advice and encourage the spread of message with others. Deepen the connection in this stage bond with the consumer is so strong that feel the brand is made for me this is the commitment stage where the brand and consumer relationship hits the peak. Keep love alive the brand and consumer relationship matures which is essential to keep the love alive and grooming the relationship with innovation and news.

Makeup Brands go through a crisis which can be a slow-developing issue over some time or dramatic event the way consumers dictate the reenergizes its relationship with the consumer. Break up either the company recalibrates the existing brand or starts engaging with the new customer group or fails forward to eliminate the existing brand and use the lesson to develop consumer relationships with different products and services.

Role of brand love in building a consumer-brand relationship

The study conducted by Nawaz, Jiang, Alam, and Zahid Nawaz (2019) states that the current scenario theory is based on the consumer-brand relationship from a psychological perspective which is considered a fundamental assumption to generate positive response and development of the corporation. On the other hand, Safeer, He and Abrar (2020) state that the main research have a few limitations as it only discussed that the behavior and intellect experience of an individual has nothing to do with the concept of brand love it is mainly subjective to the internal response of consumer, Attribution theory states that past events tend to influence behavior and response. Many other factors influence the consumer relationship as in the current world social pressure and external forces tend to shift thus authenticity is mainly impacted by a person who is genuine to their identity to face the external pressure.

Customer satisfaction has a significant relation with brand trust One of the major outcomes for post-purchase as a consequence of customer satisfaction is brand loyalty. Many research showcase that high customer satisfaction can lead to great repeat purchase behavior. Further, some research shows that brand loyalty is majorly affected by customer satisfaction. Thus there is a positive relationship between them both. However According to Wabibrading, (2019) show that in today's world due to digitalization customer have become smarter as they not only just demand the production of the company they also need full transparency to make them pay for the product as shown in the case of Facebook after 2018 majority of post decreased by 20% due to the data out breach lawsuit (DAM, 2020). Relationship between brand trust and brand loyalty Reliability and Integrity are the two elements that build trust between customer and brand. Trust tends to influence and enhance both behavior loyalty and attitudinal in consumers. The consumer always purchases the product from a trusted brand that has a high degree of loyalty. When the trust of consumers tends to be lifting off they tend to shift to the competition which not only leads to a loss in profitability but also the loss of trust (Le, 2021). The relation between customer satisfaction and brand love is the outcome of a satisfied customer and it appears as a consequence of positive interaction between brand and consumers. Many types of research showed that there is a presence of emotional and passionate attachment between the both. Moreover, brand love generates positive mouth in the market and develops loyalty (Martha-Martha and PR?YONO, 2018).

Brand Trust and Brand love Despite everything brand love is one of the major factors to build customer-brand relationships. Love for a brand can only be developed between trusted customers. In many scenarios, the reliability and honesty of a brand play an important role in affecting consumer feelings of love for a brand (Madeline and Sihombing, 2019)? Brand love and brand loyalty Many researchers have investigated the major effect of brand association and love as vital for increasing brand loyalty. The primary force affecting loyalty is that not only does it help to create and maintain a good relationship between customer and the organization but also help to generate many other advantages for the firm like charging premium prices and developing of competitive advantage. The more consumers love the brand the higher their loyalty to the brand would be, consumer tends to commit to the brand which leads to greater loyalty to the brand (Ghorbanzadeh and Rahehagh, 2021).

Brand loyalty and Brand Equity It is crucial for evaluating loyalty which can be financial and non-financial benefits for a brand it plays a crucial role which helps in achieving organizational goals. Major studies show that to build equity it should follow association and loyalty. It tends to chase behavior among consumers and cause customer switching behavior (Huang, 2017). The difference in the approach is due to gender perspective According (Ayuningsih and Maftukhah, 2020) Marketing researchers are using gender as common criteria for making segmentation. Male is mostly the risk-taker in comparison to female which shows indirect commitment in females but females are more likely to purchase the product more spontaneously compared to men and are subject to other factors like fun, and emotional arousal which is indirectly related to customer satisfaction.

Variation due to age Consumer demographic is another sign that affects marketing strategy younger age tends to get attracted to the emerging segment of the company however their purchasing power is comparatively lower. They are mainly targeted by the new brands as they have low concern for brand loyalty. The main idea of the consumer-brand relationship has received significant and escalating attention from the researcher. It is considered important for the success of the brand and capitalizes on its performance. It helps to improve the brand durability, willingness to pay the premium cost, and build brand loyal. Consumer brand relationship is a psychological bond that is created between which is originated in socio psycho and this relationship has been considered an interpersonal relationship. Include reciprocal interaction between several outcomes and participants (Shin et. al., 2019).

Methodology

For conducting the above research Survey instrument and analysis techniques were used to draw a cemented result about the effect of brand love on the consumer-brand relationship.

Survey Method In this a mix of both online and offline survey methods was used to collect the data from the sample population. The study took into consideration Samsung users which included all the age groups and both gender. This brand was selected due to the brand being one of the most famous and familiar brands. The main limitation of this is that it only considered a small group for population size and the brand selected was only from one industry which can lead to the unreliability of data. Analysis Techniques In this study the particular least square structural equation was used for associating and investigating variables. Furthermore to measure the effect of age and gender the taken data were further distributed in different parts. The study only used age and gender as a restrain to a current demographic variable for future study other variables can also be considered.

Conclusion

The essay included the concept of brand love and the different phases of it which include customer value, satisfaction, self-identity, and intrinsic rewards. The research conducted by Batra, Ahuvia, and Bagozzi had 70 telephonic rounds 1st round it was a non-interpersonal relationship allocated with the brand whereas the second round focused on the brands that people love. The hypothesis is based on the relation between brand loyalty and customer satisfaction and the method used in the same.

References

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