Deconstructing Self Goal-Related Antecedents of Brand Love: An Abstract

Brand love has ignited renewed attention of researchers and practitioners, with recent development of the first pragmatically useful brand love scales (Bagozzi et al. 2017). As such, further testing of this concept could strengthen its theoretical and practical relevance, given that ‘love’ is culturally grounded (Albert et al. 2008). Besides, consumers are argued to engage in relationships with brands that serve their self-goals (Ashworth et al. 2009), which are: to express own self (value expressive); to maintain self-esteem (social adjustive); and to bolster self-esteem (affiliation) (Katz 1960; Shavitt 1990). Prior research mostly tested the impact on brand identification and sense of brand community, which are respectively similar conceptually to value expressive and affiliation, on brand relationship constructs that may, but not always, comprise a love dimension. Scant research has been done to examine the roles of all self-related goals that also include social adjustive in construing brand love construct of emotional nature. This research aims to examine the relative impact of self-related goals on brand love, and subsequently behavioural intentions that consist of brand loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. Data collected from a mall-intercept survey with 216 fashion clothing consumers and 198 smartphone consumers were analysed to test hypotheses using SmartPLS 3.3.3. Fashion clothing and smartphone products are selected as the purchases of these products are usually non-routine decision-making situations. The result reveals that brand identification and social adjustive moderately influence brand love (all p < 0.05), which in turn affects brand loyalty and positive word-of-mouth (all p < 0.05). Mediational analyses show brand love mediates fully the effect of brand identification but only partially the effect of social adjustive on brand loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. The finding also shows that sense of brand community, while not significantly influencing brand love (p > 0.05), drives consumers’ brand loyalty and positive word-of-mouth (all p < 0.05). This study contributes to the brand relationship literature with respect to the formation of brand love and behavioural intentions. Brand love appears to be the main mechanism serving the consumer’s own-self goal captured by brand identification; evidence concerning the roles of social goal-related constructs on brand love is mixed. While the consumer’s perceived brand’s ability to deliver social adjustive utility may make them love the brands, their sense of belonging to a community does not guarantee their brand love of the brands. Practically, the findings provide marketers with insights about the meaningful distinction of lower-order self-related goals. For consumers who look to brands for expressing their own self or maintaining their self-esteem, marketers may focus on transformational communication tactics that drive brand love and consequently behavioural intentions. Meanwhile, for those who aim to bolster their self-esteem, marketers may invest in the creation and maintenance of a brand community.