Brand Love
Recognition of the importance of brand love is a?relatively recent marketing?phenomenon,?and?has?been?shown?to?in?uence?marketing communications?decisions?(Batra?et?al.,?2012;?Carroll?&?Ahuvia,?2006). Fournier??(2009)??explained??“that??consumers??can??think??about??their relationships with brands in a way that is similar to their relationships with committed partners or best friends”. The basis of brand love (i.e. consumers developing??emotional??relationships??with??brands??based??on??features, personality and symbolic attributes of brands) is grounded in the theory of brand??positioning??literature??(MacInnis??&??Folkes,??2017).??Through??the phenomenon?of?humanization?of?brands,?consumers?express?themselves both personally and socially (Ahuvia, 2015). Since brand love is a concept that is derived from the concept of interpersonal love in psychology (“I love you”), and is applied in a consumption context of a product, therefore it is deemed difficult to understand (Delgado et al., 2017).
?
Shimp?and?Madden?(1988)?viewed?the?concept?of?brand?love?as embedded in the interpersonal theories in psychology. They proposed that love?that?is?interpersonal,?and?love?for?a?product?are?similar.?Among various theories about brand love, Sternberg and Barnes’s (1986) triangular theory of love is a common framework researchers have used to explain
?
brand love in the past. Sternberg and Barnes’s (1986) theory makes use of a metaphor, to conceptually explain consumer-object love. The metaphor comprises???of???three???components;???intimacy???("feelings???of???closeness, connectedness,?and?bondedness"),?passion??("the?drives?that?leads?to romance,???physical???attraction,???sexual???consummation,???and???related phenomena???in???loving???relationships"),???and???decision/commitment ("Decision?is?the?short?term?recognition?that?one?loves?someone?else, whereas commitment is the long term intention to maintain that love”).
?
Rauschnabel and Ahuvia (2014) are credited as the pioneers of the concept of brand anthropomorphism and its effect in the form of brand love; but they complained about the lack of research in the domain of brand love. Empirical findings of the relationship of brand love with other consumer behaviour variables are indeed not extensive, and there is more that needs to be done to understand brand love, conceptually and empirically (Batra et al., 2012). In particular, brands of fashion products are known to possess symbolic?meanings,?as?compared?to?brands?in?other?product?categories (Escalas & Bettman, 2005). This is due to the ability of fashion brands to convey the identity of the wearers (Hebdige, 1987). There is a need to fill the conceptual, contextual and methodological gaps present in understanding the?concept?of?brand?love,?which?is?as?an?emotional?bond?that?creates?a romantic?relationship?between?brands?and?consumers.?It?must?also?be understood?that?this?relationship?goes?beyond?brand?satisfaction,?brand loyalty and brand trust. The research on these lines inevitably needs to relate brand positioning strategies that eventually lead to brand love. Most of the prior literature in this regard originates from the United States of America (Albert?et?al.,?2013);?therefore,?a?study?based?on?Pakistani?fashion?retail brands will add value to the existing literature on brand love.
?
Ahuvia (1993; 2005) pioneered the quantitative analysis of brand love,??and??the?consumers’??ability?to?love??a?brand??and??their??related consumption behaviour. Ahuvia’s work revolves around explaining that interpersonal?love,?and?consumer-brand?love?have?more?commonalities than differences. For example, the consumers find products attractive, they aspire to have them, long for their consumption, and they feel that a certain brand is a natural fit to their personality. Consumers feel willing to spend their financial resources on a brand because they feel as if it is a part of them.?This?perspective?is?in?consistency?with?Aron's?theory?of?self- expansion as applied to brands (Aron & Aron, 1986), where closeness to a brand is shown in a Venn diagram depicting the self as an overlap with the brand (MacInnis & Folkes, 2017).
?
Despite?the?existence?of?different?theoretical?perspectives?about brand?love,?there?is?unanimity?with?regards?to?the?possibility?of?the presence of love that consumers can have with a brand, and such brands become?an?important?part?of?their?lives?(Ballester,?Palazón,?&?Mu?oz,
2017). Although brand love has emerged as an important consumer-brand relationship construct, there is still a lack of understanding as to how the love relationship between a consumer and a brand is created, fostered, and strengthened by the efforts of marketers. It has been proposed that brand love may be in?uenced by the effectiveness of brand positioning strategies (e.g., product features, bene?ts of the product) adopted by the marketers (Batra et al., 2012; Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006).