Does Brand Love = Brand Loyalty?

Do you love your Mac and wouldn't be caught dead with a PC? Drive a Harley and won't even sit on a Honda or Kawasaki? Do you have a favorite brand of shoes? Make-up? Golf equipment? Cashmere sweater?

If you have brands that you "love", you are not alone. “Brand love” does exist, and is stronger than had been thought. New research findings from a study at USC Marshall School of Business support the hypothesis that brand love does indeed generate brand loyalty. Does anyone remember New Coke?

"Brand Attachment and Brand Attitude Strength: Conceptual and Empirical Differentiation of Two Critical Brand Equity Drivers," a study published in the November issue of the Journal of Marketing, indicates that brand attachment has much stronger impact on consumers than previously believed. In fact, the study suggests, brand attachment can even be strong enough to create a form of separation anxiety when favorite brands are replaced.

The study advances existing brand research in consumer psychology and goes beyond the existing paradigm, indicating that traditional measurements such as brand attitude strength do not adequately explain consumers' intense loyalties to the brands they love -- that they fail to explain how brands capture "consumers' hearts and minds."

Brand attachment, the authors claim, does exist, and is predicated on a brand/self-relationship and can better explain what drives consumer behavior and their loyalty and commitment to the brands. It is brand attachment that explains consumers' devotion to the iPod, fans' intense reaction at celebrity deaths and the torment of teenagers who are denied their favorite brand of jeans. Through brand attachment, the USC Marshall study suggests, consumers see the brands as an extension of themselves.

The study's key findings include:

• The more strongly a consumer's attachment to a brand, the more willing they are to forsake personal resources to maintain an ongoing relationship with the brand. They are willing to engage in difficult behaviors - "those that require investments of time, money and energy, so as to maintain or deepen a brand relationship."
• Highly attached consumers are more motivated to devote their own resources in the process of self-expansion, including paying more, defending the brand, derogating alternatives, and devoting more time to the brand through brand communities and brand promotion through social media.
• Attachment represented by both brand-self-connection and prominence is a significantly better predictor than brand attitude strength of actual behaviors.

David Aaker, well-known branding advocate and best-selling author, concludes in a recent post "Does Brand Love Really Exist?" that this study is an impressive validation and elaboration of what had been basically a common sense analogy, with implications about the creation, maintenance and measurement of loyalty."

So what does this mean for your company and the marketing programs you develop?
Well, it is certainly a validation of the need to understand and communicate the emotional benefits, not just the attributes of your brand.

But more than that, I think it says that brands should be treated as a living, breathing extension of their users if they want to be "loved".


Don Morgan is VP Communications for PSAMA and Head Rainmaker at Raindance Consulting, a business development and social media consultant in Seattle.