Consumers brand love progression and the influence of culture and consumption values

Abstract

Love in consumption has drawn enormous attention in the recent years in the field of marketing especially in searching for long term sustainability in consumer and brand relationship. The metaphor of human interpersonal relationship has greatly inspired researchers into adopting love concept in consumer consumptions. Although the development of love metaphor in marketing has increased, it is noticeable that the current studies in this area of marketing is still limited and confined to only three major areas i.e., direct adaptation of interpersonal love theory in consumer brand love formation, conceptualisation of consumer declaration of love towards their brand and the antecedents and consequences of brand love. The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of consumer brand love relationship formation from its developmental perspectives.The ability to visualise each stages of development may contribute significantly to branding managers in determining the right marketing campaigns, treatments and strategies in achieving brand love and ultimately sustainable brand loyalty. Build upon the interpersonal relationship development theory, this study proposes a framework of progression that conceptualise the stages of development of consumer brand love formation from the initial stage of awareness to the stage of love, i.e. Awareness → Liking → Experimenting → Passion → Love. This study also aims to understand the influence of cultural and consumption values (functional and hedonic) on this proposed framework. Based on the research framework, five hypotheses were developed to conceptualise the developmental stages of consumer brand love relation and five hypotheses were developed to test the proposition of the cultural and consumption values influence towards the progression. The mix-method parallel convergence triangulation research design was used to conduct this study. In the quantitative phase, 535 useable data of various populations‟ characteristics (i.e. post graduate students and car owners) were collected from the automotive shops and service centre, universities and the automotive fan clubs social media. In the qualitative phase, 18 informants were interviewed in Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru. Gamma and Somers‟d directional statistics were used to measure the monotonic progression of the brand love relationship stages. The statistical results have strongly supported the monotonic progression in the consumers brand love relationship development. The triangulation process of the qualitative results have partially supported that consumers progressed in the stage liked manner in their brand love relationship formation. These results contribute to the theory of brand love by unveiling the developmental and progression aspect of brand love formations and the influence of cultural and consumption values on the sequence of progression. The findings have also changed the way the brand love concept is perceived previously, where brand love concept is a progressive concept and it develops in stages over time.