Purpose -This paper aims to examine the role of attachment in consumer brand relationships and its links with constructs such as trust, satisfaction, commitment and behavioural loyalty. Design/methodology/approach -This paper is based on exploratory and confirmatory studies that provide a model that explains the relationship between brand attachment and its outcomes. A structural equation modelling is used to assess the hypothetical links. Findings -The findings of the structural model confirm the majority of the hypothesised relationships. Brand attachment is considered as an important input to brand commitment for utilitarian products. Originality/value -Few studies have attempted to model the relationship between brand attachment and its antecedents and outcomes. This research also focused on a particular utilitarian product that is not -apparently -affect laden.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate how context influences the quality of business relationships. This theoretical question is studied from the point of view of trust, one of the important components of business relationship quality. The authors study how trust is related to the dynamics and management of the business relationship in the context of an emerging market.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on qualitative interviews with 15 spare-parts resellers in the Tunisian automotive industry. The authors take a monadic view, interviewing resellers about their relationships with their wholesalers-importers. The decision to undertake the research in Tunisia is based on three factors. First, Tunisia is an emerging country and there is very little published research based in the Maghreb countries. Second, the Tunisian automotive parts market structure is relatively simple and, hence, easily understood, with most spare-parts being imported because of the low level of local production. Third, the actors in the study are all Tunisian companies, so research allows us to explore relationships between local companies in an emerging country.
Findings
The authors find that different kinds of trust play different roles over the dynamics of the relationship. Perceived trust is more important at the emergent stage of a relationship, and as the two parties learn from each other, experienced trust becomes more important in the established relationships. The initial perceived trust creates the possibility of building trust, and when mutual trust exists between the parties, it motivates them to maintain the relationship, but there is always the threat of the degradation of the quality of the relationship because of the violation or destruction of the trust.
Research limitations/implications
This paper shows that more care should be taken when using trust as the variable under scrutiny. Different aspects of trust manifest themselves at various stages of the relationship building cycle.
Practical implications
The results emphasize that when initiating a business relationship, managers first need to create perceived trust. Thereafter, once trust is built up, it is the trust that may “manage” or act to control the on-going relationship as long as the partners’ behavior or network changes do not violate the trust.
Originality/value
The results of this paper show that there is a mutual but not necessarily symmetrical or balanced influence of trust on the behavior of the partners involved. The influence of the different parties is dependent on the power architecture, the history of the relationship and the network position of the actors.
The purpose of this paper is to develop a scale measuring consumers' brand benefits in less developed economies. Based on the literature, items have been generated in qualitative and quantitative studies and tested by using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The findings show that brand benefits converge into a twofactor structure (functional and symbolic) instead of three (functional, experiential and symbolic). These findings can be justified by the fact that consumers in developing economies do not have as much experience with brands as the ones from developed economies. The results also relate to previous literature findings on the topic of utilitarian and affective brand relationships. This scale can be used to advance the domain of brand benefits in a cross-cultural environment and can be employed by marketers when businesses plan to brand their products in developed economies.
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