Search results

This paper aims to use the cognitive appraisal theory to investigate the effects of brand engagement and materialism on the positive emotions of joy and excitement evoked by a product at different stages of the purchase process.

Two complementary studies were conducted to achieve the research objectives. Study 1 used a longitudinal design, examining the pre-purchase stage and a moment shortly after the purchase. Study 2 adopted a cross-sectional approach, focusing on the post-purchase stage. Relationships among variables were analyzed through hierarchical regression and moderation analyses.

The findings indicate that materialism is not significantly associated with consumers’ positive product-evoked emotions (joy and excitement) before and shortly after purchase. At these two stages, brand engagement predicts positive emotions. In the post-purchase stage, where materialism is weakly related to joy and excitement, a robust positive link exists between brand engagement and positive product-evoked emotions. Moreover, higher levels of materialism reduce the experience of joy and excitement among participants with high levels of brand engagement.

Experiencing joy and excitement is crucial in consumer behavior. However, little is known about the determinants of these emotions in the consumption context, especially concerning internal consumption-related factors and different stages of the purchase process. This paper contributes to the field by shedding light on the role of brand engagement and materialism in the experience of positive product-evoked emotions. The findings provide evidence that brand engagement significantly enhances consumers’ positive product-evoked emotions, highlighting its importance in consumer behavior research.

This study aims to examine how the appraisal of both incidental and direct positive other-agency emotions (vs self-agency emotions) enhances brand trust and, subsequently, brand attitudes.

The paper presents three experiments that examine the effect of other-agency emotions (vs self-agency emotions) on brand trust and brand attitudes by both Australian and USA consumers. Studies 1 and 2 compared the effect of self- and other-agency emotions evoked through an irrelevant reflective task. Study 3 used real-world marketing communication to evoke self- or other-pride.

Gratitude (Study 1) and other-pride (Study 2) evoked through an irrelevant, reflective task enhanced brand trust and attitudes for both familiar and unfamiliar brands. The authors replicated these effects using marketing communications that evoked other-pride (Study 3) and showed how these findings can be applied in a marketing context.

There are contradictory findings in the literature on how positive emotions influence brand trust and attitudes. The findings show that other-agency appraisal is a crucial appraisal within a marketing context and reveals why not all positively valenced emotions increase brand trust and brand attitudes. The findings highlight the importance of examining the effects of emotions on brand trust and attitudes beyond the consideration of their valence.

The research provides significant implications for marketers to improve brand trust and brand attitudes through the elicitation of other-agency emotions. The findings also demonstrate that different components of emotions, such as appraisal structure, may influence consumer trust and attitudes towards marketing and branding communications.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to empirically demonstrate how other-agency appraisals of emotions can influence consumer brand trust and attitudes in a marketing context.

The study aims to examine the indirect relationships via application (app) brand self-relevance emotions and self-relevance that underlie the relationships between perceived value of mobile apps and (brand) love with respect to mobile apps. The study further investigates the moderating role of user–app relationship duration in the formation process of brand love for mobile apps from a dynamic and long-term perspective.

A multiple moderated-mediation model is developed and empirically tested with a sample of 396 users of popular Chinese mobile educational apps.

The study reveals that utilitarian value exhibits positive indirect relationships with brand love for mobile apps through increased positive self-relevance emotions. All three types of perceived value of mobile apps (utilitarian, hedonic and social) affect app brand love positively via self-relevance. These three types of perceived value were found to be serially linked to brand love through self-relevance and self-relevance emotions. Furthermore, empirical evidence is found for the moderating effects of user–app relationship duration.

By testing mechanisms simultaneously in an integrative model, this study investigates the reasons for app brand love that attract a user into a lasting relationship with an app and extends knowledge of the app brand love building process in inducing strong and positive brand–self connections. Our study also makes practical contributions by offering insights into delivering the most desired benefits to mobile app users according to different contextual conditions, in order to attract and retain users in a more cost-effective manner.

Consumers' responses to service failures are influenced not just by company-related issues but also by one's ability to react to stressful situations. The aim of this research is to explore the emotional intelligence of brand haters and transform them into forgivers.

This study used two qualitative methods, namely in-depth semi-structured interviews with a total of 17 participants who have different emotional intelligence levels (high, medium and low) and projective techniques with 6 participants.

This study's results showed that consumers with high and medium emotional intelligence feel less hate toward a brand and are more likely to forgive it, whereas consumers with low emotional intelligence feel more hate toward a brand and are unwilling to forgive it.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is among the first to shed light on the importance of managing hate by consumers. Findings will help managers understand the importance of consumer personality in a management strategy and explain why some consumers forgive brands while others participate in anti-brand activities.

This study aims to propose a conceptual framework for transition of brand trust to brand love in an uncertain market situation, from the perspective of cognitive-emotion theory (CET).

Since brand anthropomorphism is successfully established in branding research, this study takes cognitive characteristics of brand trust and emotional characteristic of brand love from extant literature to develop a conceptual framework for transformation of brand trust (cognition) into brand love (emotion). This study situates the relationship in the context of market uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses in the development of the conceptual framework by taking cognitive components of brand trust and brand behavioural characteristics as moderator, in uncertain market situation.

Findings suggest that transition of brand trust (cognition) to brand love (emotion) is possible in uncertain situation, and brand behavioural characteristics moderate this relationship. Brand behavioural characteristics are brand innovativeness, brand ethicality, brand empathy, brand expertise and brand agility, which have the potential to further strengthen the relationship in the given situation.

This research proposes a conceptual model and propositions that add a rich understanding to the relationship of brand trust and brand love, which requires empirical testing in any brand category context. Through a richer understanding of conditions and the underlying psychological mechanism, researchers and marketers, brand managers, policymakers and so forth can gain insights that aid strategic decision-making. Trusted brands can leverage on the situation by highlighting unique behavioural characteristics to establish a strong and sustainable long-term relationship.

The current research is an attempt to provide deeper insights from the perspective of CET, into the relationship of brand trust (cognition) and brand love (emotion) by introducing conditions under which a trusted brand becomes a lovable brand in uncertain market situation, thereby adding new knowledge to branding, customer-brand relationship sustainability, in uncertainty literature. The new perspective, that is CET, puts forward a novice view on the advantage of brand love over brand trust that could help in formulating strategic decisions in managing brands in crisis situation.

The purpose of this study is to ascertain the effects of place attachment on brand loyalty. This study further ascertains whether the effects of emotion-based attachment on brand loyalty are stronger for customers who have a positive experience with a restaurant brand. Additionally, the authors investigate whether emotion-based attachment mediates the relationships between identity-based attachments, place dependence and brand loyalty in the restaurant setting.

The authors administered the questionnaire to customers (diners) of restaurants in Ghana, and they were completed via a paper and pencil/pen approach. The authors tested their hypotheses using structural equation modeling.

The findings show that identity-based and emotion-based attachment enhances brand loyalty within a restaurant setting. The results also show that place dependence attachment promotes emotional bonding with restaurant brands. The study's findings also show that place dependence attachment does not have a direct and positive significant effect on brand loyalty except when an emotional response is produced.

Place attachment studies in a restaurant setting are rare. This study thus contributes to the place attachment literature in restaurants setting.

The study of shame has a long tradition in intra- and inter-personal psychology. This paper aims to investigate whether consumers can experience brand shame after self-relevant consumption incidents. Specifically, this research proposes that consumers follow a complex shame-inducing process in the aftermath of unpleasant experiences involving their favorite brand. The moderating role of relational tie strength between consumers and their favorite brand existing prior to symbolic failures is examined.

A scenario-based, online survey (n = 660) among consumers who have recently experienced a self-relevant failure with their favorite brand was conducted. Confirmatory factor analysis ensured the reliability and validity of the measurement model. For testing the conceptual model, data was analyzed by means of a moderated mediation analysis. The proposed model was tested against, among others, common method bias and alternative models. The findings were cross-validated with a scenario-based online experiment (n = 1,616).

Results show that brand shame is a key mediator between customer dissatisfaction and brand anger when self-relevant, symbolic failures happen. Moreover, strong consumer-brand identification triggers brand-detrimental effects. It is shown to influence the connection between consumers’ inward- (i.e. brand shame) and resulting outward-directed (i.e. brand anger) negative emotions on brands, which lead to consumer vengeance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to introduce the concept of situational brand shame to the literature on favorite brands. Furthermore, it shows that consumer-brand identification moderates the direct and indirect (via brand shame) unfavorable effects of failure-induced dissatisfaction on brand anger. This research adds insights to the investigation of the “love-becomes-hate” effect arising after self-relevant failures involving consumers’ most preferred brand.

Given the growing preference for internet celebrity restaurants, it is crucial to explore how internet celebrity restaurants can maintain customer loyalty. Therefore, this study aims to examine the connections between brand cognition [emotion value, brand symbol (BS) and brand experience (BE)], brand resonance (BR) and revisit intention.

In this paper, the authors use a theoretical model to test the relationship between cognition and intention. A total of 366 volunteers were recruited to participate in this research. Hypothesis testing and a moderated mediation model were used to measure the results.

BR acts as a mediator in the interaction between emotion value, BS, experience and repurchase intention (RI). Surprisingly, the authors also discover that electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) acceptance negatively modifies the relationship between brand cognition and BR. Internet exposure (IE) helps consumers perceive BE and BSs more favorably.

Managers should be aware of how internet celebrity BR is built. Specifically, they can use cultural or emotional elements to maintain relationships with consumers. Furthermore, to lessen the negative consequences of e-WOM, managers should work to maintain positive WOM consistency.

The research advances our knowledge of RI in internet celebrity restaurants settings. This study pioneers an investigation of how brand cognition is related to RI through BR’s mediating effect. It enriches this research perspective of the emerging restaurant literature. By analyzing the boundary impact of internet transmission on resonance, it also advances the literature.

Negative online consumer reviews represent different forms of injustice. The effect of different types of injustice experienced in a service encounter on a brand is unknown. This study aims to investigate the effect and cause of different forms of injustice on brand love. It also explores which type of responses are more effective to mitigate their damaging effect.

One text mining, using SAS enterprise miner, and three experimental studies were conducted. ANOVA and mediation and moderation analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Negative reviews specific to procedural injustice are more damaging than reviews specific to distributive or interactional injustice experienced in a service encounter. The underlying reason behind this differential effect is that perceived procedural injustice influences consumers more to punish the brand, resulting in a greater negative effect on brand love. To counter the damage, a sympathetic, rather than empathetic, brand response is more effective.

This study contributes to justice theory and brand love literature by providing evidence that procedural injustice triggers the highest level of willingness to punish and thus the lowest level of brand love. Consequently, willingness to punish, rather than emotion, is found to be the underlying reason behind procedural injustice having the strongest negative effect on brand love.

Social media has broadened the scope of luxury brand marketing and has emerged as a salient tool for Internet marketing campaigns in the post-pandemic world. Under the theoretical lens of the SOR model, this study aims to explore the nexus between brand social media marketing (BSMM) activities and online consumer brand engagement (CBE) via mediating consumers' emotions in the modest luxury fashion branding post-pandemic context.

This study conducted a post-pandemic survey in five major metropolitan cities in Pakistan with a total of 584 eligible young consumers who follow the fan pages of fashion brands. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses.

The findings reveal that BSMM activities have a significant influence on three emotion states (pleasure, arousal and dominance); however, only pleasure and arousal significantly drive CBE (i.e. affective engagement and activation). Moreover, the results show that pleasure and arousal partially mediate the relationships between BSMM activities and affective and activation dimensions of CBE, while dominance fully mediates the relationship between BSMM activities and cognitive engagement. Interestingly, only affective engagement was shown to be the most potent component of CBE in fostering positive emotions toward luxury fashion brands.

This study contributes to the literature on social media marketing and consumer brand engagement by revealing valuable insights into post-pandemic luxury fashion branding that could assist academicians and marketing practitioners of non-Western markets.