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The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of brand love by studying its intensity and the nature of extreme forms of it, rather than its presence or absence. The love of a sports team is a type of brand love and is a valuable context to study of brand love intensity because the intensity of love can become more extreme than for products; it has two distinctive features that are theoretically, management and policy relevant; and it is an under-researched context in marketing that is socially and economically significant.

The authors empirically develop and test a multidimensional hierarchical higher-order measure of the intensity of team love and a model of its drivers and outcomes using a sample of supporter club members of a professional sports team who vary in their intensity of love for the team.

The results support our measurement model and its distinctive features, especially the importance of the perceived two-way bond fans have with their team. While overall intensity of team love is not related to social influence or on-field performance, as hypothesized, they are related to sub-dimensions of team love, reflecting its multidimensionality. As hypothesized, the intensity of team love and social influence are related to the intention to renew club membership even with increased costs and poor performance and social influence is directly related to word of mouth and game attendance.

The research is limited to the club members of one sports team in a particular sport in one country and one cultural context. Future research opportunities include: extending it to other sports and brand contexts, refining the methodology and addressing other issues highlighted by the research.

The results indicate the limits of management control of team love intensity because it develops over time independently through social processes. However, firms can help facilitate these processes. The social dimensions indicate the need to develop socially, as well as individually-focussed relationship management strategies. Most devoted fans are valuable customers, but some hardcore elements can be dysfunctional and sabotage the brand.

Sport is personally, social and economically significant in most cultures and love of a sports team love can be an important glue that binds people and communities. However, the existence of extreme hardcore fans and heated rivalries can also be divisive and pose challenges for social policy. Hence, the need to better understand the factors driving more extreme forms of team love to better inform the development of social policy.

The authors focus on the intensity of brand love rather than its presence and absence as in prior research. The authors develop and test a new hierarchical measure of sports team love intensity and a model of its drivers and outcomes. The sports context is under-researched in marketing but reveals the important role played by dimensions that are obscured in studies of product brand love – its social nature and the perceived reciprocal relation with devoted fans. The results contribute to developing extended theories of brand love, open up new research opportunities and have management and policy implications.

This study aims to add to the understanding of the interactive nature of brand love by using a multilayer perspective that incorporates individual, group and societal contexts.

The qualitative empirical study uses abductive reasoning. Its theories and conclusions are grounded in naturally occurring data from an online brand community. The approach revealed new interactive processes of brand love.

This study extends our understanding of the interactive nature of brand love by adopting a layered perspective incorporating micro- (individual), meso- (in-group), macro- (in-group vs out-group) and mega-layer (societal) social dynamics that complements the predominant focus on individual psychological processes. It challenges the linear, monodirectional trajectory approach to brand love, suggesting that brand love is in constant flux as individuals move across the layers in their identification with the brand.

This study provides data from one destination brand in Finland. Future studies could consider other types of brands and contexts in other countries and cultures.

This study shows brand managers that brand lovers can be divided into subgroups with distinct drivers of their love to which brand managers should attend.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to describe the interactive nature of brand love through interactions between and within four layers of brand love. Furthermore, this study enhances our understanding of the contradictory aspects of brand love.

The purpose of this paper is to define the brand religiosity phenomenon and develop a theoretical process model showing the interrelationships between brand religiosity and other related concepts leading to the formation of a distinct brand sub-culture or community.

A large volume of prior literature on consumer–brand relationships has been reviewed to develop the conceptual framework.

The framework developed shows several actionable antecedents and desirable marketing outcomes of brand religiosity. The framework also depicts that brand religiosity leads to the creation of social anti-structure by forming a distinct brand community that frees individuals from the regular social structure and motivates them to adopt a distinct brand sub-culture formed. Theoretical contributions and business policy-related implications of brand religiosity are discussed.

Value of the study lies in conceptualizing brand religiosity and developing an integrative process model centering the concept.

Fashion brands are one of the strongest means of expressing consumers identity. This study explores and empirically validates the concepts of brand love and hate for masstige fashion brands from the purview of emerging markets. This study deciphers three components of masstige fashion brand promise through the lens of hedonic identity, uniqueness and expected social gains for the affluent middle-class consumers. The model is complemented by the impact of environmental and society’s well-being.

Empirical evidence was obtained through an online survey in India. Total of 222 complete responses were used to test hypotheses by fitting a model with the partial least squares algorithm.

Fashion brand love is triggered by consumers’ hedonic identity and expected social gains. Brand hate is fuelled by environmental and societal well-being concerns, expected social gains and uniqueness. Theoretical contribution is threefold: First, the relevance of social and environmental consequences reflecting consumers’ accepted responsibility for their masstige consumption is introduced. Second, the study deciphers the emotions related to masstige brand love and brand hate for emerging market’s affluent middle-class. Third, empirical results contribute to the ongoing discussion on whether brand hate and love are two distinct concepts or collapse to be two extremes of one and the same continuum.

Middle-class consumers in India are strict in their avoidance and rejection of the lower classes’ preferred fashion brands. Targeting must consider the social classes hierarchy. Marketing-mix design, particularly prices and distribution networks, need to enable a distinction between the social classes.

Masstige fashion brand love and hate turn out to be two distinct constructs that co-exist rather than being two extremes of one and the same dimension.

Indian middle-class consumers satisfy their need of environmental and social caretaking by avoidance and brand hate but continue to choose masstige brands to demonstrate social status and are not modernizing their traditional accumulative materialism.

Negativity towards a brand is typically conceived as a significant problem for brand managers. This paper aims to show that negativity towards a brand can represent an opportunity for companies when brand polarization occurs. To this end, the paper offers a new conception of the brand polarization phenomenon and reports exploratory findings on the benefits of consumers’ negativity towards brands in the context of brand polarization.

To develop a conception of brand polarization, the paper builds on research on polarizing brands and extends it by integrating insights from systematic literature reviews in three bodies of literature: scholarship on brand rivalry and, separately, polarization in political science and social psychology. Using qualitative data from 22 semi-structured interviews, the paper explores possible advantages of brand polarization.

This paper defines the brand polarization phenomenon and identifies multiple perspectives on brand polarization. Specifically, the findings highlight three distinct parties that can benefit from brand polarization: the polarizing brand as an independent entity; the brand team behind the polarizing brand; and the passionate consumers involved with the polarizing brand. The data reveal specific advantages of brand polarization associated with the three parties involved.

Managers of brands with a polarizing nature could benefit from having identified a group of lovers and a group of haters, as this could allow them to improve their focus when developing and implementing the brands’ strategies.

This exploratory study is the first explicitly focusing on the brand polarization phenomenon and approaches negativity towards brands as a potential opportunity.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between brand love and brand addiction and their effects on consumers' negative behaviors with respect to excessive spending, trash-talking and the feeling of anxiety.

A sample of 352 young fashion brand consumers responded to a structured questionnaire. The resulting data were analyzed with structural equation modeling in MPlus.

While brand love and brand addiction are related concepts, their effects on negative consumer behaviors differ. In the presence of brand addiction as a mediator of brand love, brand addiction has a significant effect on the three negative behaviors, and the authors observe a suppression effect of brand love on the outcome variables, with total effects (direct and indirect) being insignificant.

The main limitation of this study was its single-country cross-sectional convenience sample.

While brand addiction could aid brands by leading consumers to spend excessively on them and trash-talk rival brands, it may also lead to increased consumer anxiety.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to empirically assess the relationship between brand love and brand addiction and their effects on three distinctive negative consumer behaviors. This shows that brand love is an important antecedent of brand addiction.

Though brand love is recognized as being an important marketing topic both for theory and practice, a gap still exists with regard to its operationalization. To bridge this gap, this paper proposes a single-item measure (SIM) that uses a visual rating scale (i.e., a rating scale combining verbal with nonverbal contents).

Three studies covering over 700 respondents and examining three international brands over three product categories were conducted to test the new measure.

Findings provide consistent evidence for the reliability and validity of the proposed measure. They also demonstrate that brand love, as gauged by the new SIM, is good in predicting positive word of mouth, willingness to pay a higher price, and willingness to forgive brand mishaps.

The paper focuses on brand love mainly from a measurement perspective.

This paper provides a practical and parsimonious tool to measure brand love.

Extant SIMs of brand love are less than ordinal, content invalid, of unknown reliability, and of untested concurrent validity. This paper provides academics and practitioners alike with a SIM of brand love that is ordinal, content valid, and tested in terms of reliability and concurrent validity.

The aim of this paper is to conceptualise the influences of extreme negative emotional response towards luxury brands as expressed in brand hate.

The paper uses examples obtained from a critical incidents approach to interviews with a small sample of German and British luxury consumers. Informants were asked to identify extremely positive and then extremely negative incidents which affected their perceptions of luxury brands. This critical incidents approach allowed for a clearer focus on the negative incidents and allowed identification of common themes that may be related to extreme negative affect.

The evaluation of negative incidents which the informants named suggest that country of origin, consumer dissatisfaction with service, and negative stereotypes of luxury brand users are potential antecedents of brand hate within the luxury sector. Some types of advertising might heighten the latter effect. Consumers' perceptions of corporate social performance did not seem to be a strong source of brand hate, yet the respondents stressed the significance of luxury brands to act responsibly. Thus, it is important for luxury brands to avoid potential dissonance in the way consumers perceive them.

This primarily conceptual paper uses examples from Germany and the UK. Therefore, it is recommended to continue with studies in other countries, including emerging economies, to identify potential cross‐cultural differences. Furthermore, it would be interesting to ascertain which factors are the most significant in evoking extreme negative brand affect.

The core reputation of the luxury brand is a common theme which is identified as a driving force of brand hate. Brand practitioners therefore need to consider how to build a strong positive reputation in order to withstand the immediate and long‐term consequences of brand hate.

The need to investigate antecedents of extreme negative affect as manifested in brand hate reflects a gap in extant literature on luxury brand management. Therefore, the authors contend that their conceptualization of antecedents of affect will have important theoretical and practical implications within the field of luxury brand management.

This study aims to apply the concept of brand love to a destination and investigate its antecedents and consequences. It also explores the moderating effects of time elapsed since the establishment of the destination brand love relationship on the outcomes of destination brand love.

A total of 5,511 valid responses were obtained from an online survey distributed among former international students from the Erasmus program of the European Union. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was conducted to assess the hypotheses.

Destination brand love was found to have a significant impact on electronic word of mouth (eWOM), WOM, WOM intensity, recommendation and revisit intention. Moderation analysis revealed that the amount of time elapsed since the establishment of the destination brand love relationship did not affect these outcomes. Moreover, destination image and the Erasmus experience had a positive effect on destination brand love.

Destination marketers should focus on enhancing the Erasmus experience and on improving destination image perception, as these factors help develop destination brand love. Marketers should also be aware that this relationship has long-lasting effects.

This study adds to the sparse literature on brand love in relation to a destination. This gives the first results for the importance of Erasmus students to the promotion of a host country. It also contributes to the question of how long the brand love relationship can last.