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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.

Customer relationships and transforming customers into evangelists are imperative in today's world. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the influence of online brand experience (OBE) on brand evangelism (BEM) via relationship quality (trust-TRT, satisfaction-SAT, and commitment-CMT) by integrating the moderating effects of brand reputation (BR), particularly in the Vietnamese banking sector.

This research obtained data from 486 Vietnamese customers who routinely used online banking services. The analysis was performed using structural equation modeling.

The findings demonstrate that OBE directly/indirectly positively affects BEM via relationship quality (TRT, SAT, CMT). Likewise, this study identified relationship quality (TRT, SAT, CMT) as an important mediator. Finally, the findings demonstrate that the moderation effects of BR significantly improved relationship quality (TRT, SAT, CMT) in the banking industry.

This study showcases the significance of OBE in increasing brand evangelists in the financial sector. Thus, this study assists Vietnamese bank managers in creating new branding strategies to foster long-lasting customer relationships.

This original study contributes to the commitment-trust theory and signaling theory by examining the impact of the OBE on brand evangelism via relationship quality by considering the moderating effect of brand reputation in the Vietnamese banking sector.

Numerous companies have launched brand pages (BPs) on social networking sites to enhance customer-brand communication, cultivate the customer-brand relationship and promote brand loyalty. This study aims to investigate how BP affordances support social commerce.

The study devises a theoretical model linking the proposed BP affordances (visibility, selectivity, persistence and interactivity) to three customer values (relationship quality, brand experience and smart shopping feeling [SSF]) to encourage brand loyalty and BP endorsement on the part of the customer.

Data collected from 591 respondents support all proposed hypotheses. The model explains high variances in brand loyalty and BP endorsement, indicating that relationship quality plays a more salient role in producing brand loyalty, while SSF plays a more important role in eliciting BP endorsement.

The study is unique in four ways. First, drawing on the lens of affordance, it proposes specific affordances for BPs and offers empirical results for their applicability. Second, by incorporating CDL into the research model, it illuminates the high explanatory power of these proposed BP affordances on the three customer values. Integrating the S-O-R model with the affordance perspective and CDL provides a more complete picture of the BP phenomenon. Third, it extends the reach of existing work by examining BP endorsement in social media as a dependent variable beyond brand loyalty, with SSF included as another source of values to shed more light on the relationships depicted in the model. Fourth, by taking trait competitiveness into account, it sheds further light on relationships between customer values and BP endorsement.

This paper aims to investigate consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral responses to brand crisis and examine an empirical model to explain consumer’s internal process in the context of negative information about a brand, analyzing the relationships between the brand association types, brand-customer relationship strength and consumers’ responses depending on the types of brand crises.

This study uses an integrative approach based on qualitative and quantitative methods: a focus-group interview and an experiment.

The results indicated that consumers’ responses were more favorable in the corporate ability (CA) crisis than in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) crisis. In addition, consumers with high brand-customer relationship strength and brand associations for CA (CSR) showed more favorable responses to a brand crisis related to CA (CSR) than to that related to CSR (CA).

Managerially, firms should improve their marketing activity to reinforce particular brand association type that strongly related customers mainly have. In addition, firms should carefully find the best timing and channel that strongly related customers usually access, to present corporate corresponding statements in brand crisis and information of their corporate crisis-coping process.

Theoretically, this study will contribute to the literature on brand crises by providing critical insights into the mechanism underlying consumers’ responses to brand crises.

This study aims to investigate ways in which hotel loyalty programs can be designed to enhance customer’s identification with a hotel brand and develop a sustainable customer-brand relationship.

The study adopted a cross-sectional design survey questionnaire for data collection and used structural equation modeling data analysis to test the conceptual model.

The three loyalty program experiences proposed (member-to-member similarity, memorable loyalty program experience and loyalty program social benefits) exerted significant positive effects on customer-brand identification (CBI), which, in turn, influences customer-brand relationship elements, including trust, commitment and switching resistance.

This study expands the scope of CBI literature, which previously focused substantially on brand level experiences, by being the first to explore a new set of CBI antecedents with a focus on loyalty program experiences. Furthermore, the current study’s findings delineate specific strategies to uphold the social and experiential aspects of loyalty programs that can develop sustainable customer-brand relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to show that new technologies have significantly changed the way that customers interact with their bank. Whilst a trip down to the local branch was mandatory in the past for a customer to do their banking, all that is required now in many situations is simply to send a text message or log on to the internet. However, the idea of exploiting customer competency with new technologies to create new distribution channels has become a double‐edged sword. Although the distance between the bank and its customer is shortened in that direct contact can be established within a matter of seconds with these new technologies, the impact on the customer's perceived relationship with the brand remains an issue of strategic importance that needs to be evaluated. In order to exploit the advantages of technology, a full understanding of the factors and processes involved in the customer‐brand relationship associated with use of self‐service banking channels is necessary.

The methodology is an empirical study using bank customers as participants, which was conducted to examine the impact of salient relationship norms on customers' perceptions of their relationship with their bank.

Based on the experiment data, the paper establishes the relevance of the concepts of communal and exchange relationship norms in the study of customer‐brand relationships in a business context.

The implications from the findings provide insights into the importance of relationship theory in explaining customers' perceived relationship with brands, specifically that of their bank.

The concept of customer engagement (CE) has emerged as an important indicator of customer-brand relationship strength. However, limited research exists to provide insight into how CE enhances the effectiveness of building such a relationship in retail services. The purpose of this paper is to extend the current understanding of CE through examination of its role in the development of customer-brand relationship quality.

To test the hypotheses contained in the proposed conceptual model, the authors used a quantitative method that included a survey questionnaire to measure customers’ perceptions with respect to the constructs of interest. Specifically, two studies were conducted in Australia. Study 1 was intended to empirically test the theoretical relationships among the constructs, while Study 2 aimed to replicate the proposed model with a different sample to enhance external validity.

In two separate studies, the results of a structural model show that the emerging concept of CE plays a significant role in building customer-brand relationship quality and, subsequently, customer loyalty toward the retail brand.

This study focusses on retail store brands only and used a cross-sectional design, which does not involve examination of cause-and-effect relationships.

From a practical point of view, the findings suggest that marketers should actively embrace strategies to foster CE to enhance brand relationship quality, and ultimately, forming a loyal customer-brand relationship.

The study makes an original contribution to the retail services literature by empirically demonstrating the relevance of CE in both customer relationship management as well as brand management.

Examines the nature of meaningful customer relationships to determine what contributes to meaningfulness and to explore ways in which companies can establish more meaningful relationships with customers. Explores and applies the social psychology roots of the concept of meaning in a customer relationships context. Gleans evidence of meaningful customer relationships from the consumer psychology and marketing literature and from research conducted by the author. Examines situations where a company or a brand clearly occupies an important place in the life of a customer and discusses the characteristics of such relationships. Examines the factors that contribute to meaningful customer relationships. Looks at the implications for further customer research and for marketing and brand managers.

Given its importance in the brand management of service firms, the present research initiative primarily concerns the investigation of the formation process of consumer-brand relationships in the service industry. By considering a chain of effects’ model, this paper aims to integrate two brand commitment paradigm’s perspectives with service evaluation theory, representing the attitudinal and behavioral aspects of the relationship building process, to better explain the way consumers relate to a service brand. The proposed conceptual model is tested in the context of mobile broadband internet services.

A survey of 573 customers of mobile internet services was conducted using a structured questionnaire with established scales. Data were analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results indicated that brand loyalty is determined by relationship commitment, which, in turn, is influenced by the consumer-brand relationship components – trust, satisfaction, investment size and quality of alternatives – as well as by the service brand’s perceived value. Finally, the relationship quality components of the brand, trust and satisfaction to a large extent, and investment size to a lesser extent, mediate the relationships between service brand evaluation and brand commitment.

The sample is industry-specific, and this may affect generalizability of findings. Also, the cross-sectional design adopted does not reflect temporal changes.

From a practical point of view, the findings suggest that providers can improve their loyalty figures through the establishment of strong consumer-brand relationships as a result of the development and delivery of high quality, valuable services and other relationship-building tactics that support the consumer-brand binding.

Although there are previous studies that extend either the relationship investment model or the commitment-trust theory with the service evaluation theory, the proposed model is the first to combine the previous three research streams into one causal chain model, to explain the development and flow of events in the consumer-brand relationship process toward brand loyalty.

This study aims to investigate the impact of the loyalty program members’ satisfaction toward the hotel loyalty program benefits and the customer management relationship initiatives of individual hotels on the brand relationship quality (BRQ), i.e. their relationship quality with the hotel brand, and its outcomes. The moderating impact of membership level on the hypothesized relationships was also investigated.

A usable sample of 920 active members of a hotel loyalty program was obtained. Structural equation modeling with partial least squares method was used to estimate the structural relationships and to investigate the moderating effect of membership level.

Employee’s customer orientation, membership communication and hotel stay-related benefits are determinants of the loyalty program members’ BRQ. BRQ is also confirmed as a higher-order construct of three latent variables which include trust, satisfaction and commitment. Moderating effects of the membership were partially supported in this study. The strongest effect of BRQ is on members’ word of mouth followed by shares of purchase. BRQ is found to have negative relationship with members’ willingness to serve as marketing resource, but the impact was small.

This is a cross-sectional study with a population of active loyalty program members of only one luxury hotel group. The sample size of the top-tier members is also smaller in comparison to the other two groups.

This study contributes to the understanding of the antecedents and consequences of BRQ and the body of knowledge about loyalty program for hotel industry.

This is one of the few studies investigating the effectiveness of hotel loyalty programs from the active members’ perspective and the moderating effect of membership level on the relationships among BRQ, its antecedents and its outcomes.