The Role of Emotions to Brand Attachment and Brand Attitude in a Retail Environment: An Extended Abstract

Consumers are able to interact with thousands of products and brands throughout their life, but they develop a strong emotional bond by a subset of them (Schouten and McAlexander 1995). It is really interesting the likelihood that consumers might develop strong emotional bonds with brands (Thomson et al. 2005). The analysis of the degree of consumers’ emotional bond will be studied by examining the nature of the influence of the attachment and attitude toward the brand. Retail environment is perfect for this study because retailers come in direct contact with the final consumers (Swarbrooke and Horner 2005). Furthermore, the richness of the retailing environment adds significant more variables, which influence consumer buying decisions (Levy and Weitz 1998). Therefore, the retail environment offers an ideal stage upon which the concept of emotions, attachment, attitude, and brand interacts.