Survey research is employed to test hypotheses involving brand love, a new marketing construct that assesses satisfied consumers’ passionate emotional attachment to particular brands. Findings suggest that satisfied consumers’ love is greater for brands in product categories perceived as more hedonic (as compared with utilitarian) and for brands that offer more in terms of symbolic benefits. Brand love, in turn, is linked to higher levels of brand loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. Findings also suggest that satisfied consumers tend to be less loyal to brands in more hedonic product categories and to engage in more positive word-of-mouth about self-expressive brands. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2006Satisfaction, Delight, Love, Loyalty, Word-of-mouth, Consumer-brand relationships,

Using a grounded theory approach, the authors investigate the nature and consequences of brand love. Arguing that research on brand love needs to be built on an understanding of how consumers actually experience this phenomenon, they conduct two qualitative studies to uncover the different elements ("features") of the consumer prototype of brand love. Then, they use structural equations modeling on survey data to explore how these elements can be modeled as both first-order and higher-order structural models. A higher-order model yields seven core elements: self-brand integration, passion-driven behaviors, positive emotional connection, long-term relationship, positive overall attitude valence, attitude certainty and confidence (strength), and anticipated separation distress. In addition to these seven core elements of brand love itself, the prototype includes quality beliefs as an antecedent of brand love and brand loyalty, word of mouth, and resistance to negative information as outcomes. Both the firstorder and higher-order brand love models predict loyalty, word of mouth, and resistance better, and provide a greater understanding, than an overall summary measure of brand love. The authors conclude by presenting theoretical and managerial implications.

This article investigates the possessions and activities that consumers love and their role in the construction of a coherent identity narrative. In the face of social forces pushing toward identity fragmentation, interviews reveal three different strategies, labeled "demarcating," "compromising," and "synthesizing" solutions, for creating a coherent self-narrative. Findings are compared to Belk's "Possessions and the Extended Self." Most claims from Belk are supported, but the notion of a core versus extended self is critiqued as a potentially confusing metaphor. The roles of loved objects and activities in structuring social relationships and in consumer well-being are also explored. I n all probability, the word "love" is used as often with objects and activities as with people. We hear it all the time, from "I love skiing" to "I love your new dress." In Sherry and McGrath's (1989, 163) study of a gift store, they note that "not only do our respondents 'love to shop'. .. but they also 'fall in love' with the items they select." In the use of products, Richins (1997) finds that love is a common consumption-related emotion. Love is so prevalent in consumption that when Schultz, Kleine, and Kernan (1989) asked participants to list feelings that they experienced when they thought about objects with which they had an emotional attachment, love was the second most commonly listed emotion, superseded only by happiness. The people, and things, we love have a strong influence on our sense of who we are, on our self. Using response time studies, Aron et al. (1991) have shown that interpersonal love involves a fusion of identities in which one's sense of self grows to include the loved other. In the consumer behavior literature, consumer identity has frequently been linked to constructs related more or less directly to love, including special possessions (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981), involvement (e.g., Celsi and Olson 1988), cathexis (e.g., Rook 1985), and consumerbrand relationships (e.g., Fournier 1998). Love differs from

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The authors investigated the structure of goal contents in a group of 1,854 undergraduates from 15 cultures around the world. Results suggested that the 11 types of goals the authors assessed were consistently organized in a circumplex fashion across the 15 cultures. The circumplex was well described by positioning 2 primary dimensions underlying the goals: intrinsic (e.g., self-acceptance, affiliation) versus extrinsic (e.g., financial success, image) and self-transcendent (e.g., spirituality) versus physical (e.g., hedonism). The circumplex model of goal contents was also quite similar in both wealthier and poorer nations, although there were some slight cross-cultural variations. The relevance of these results for several theories of motivation and personality are discussed.