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This article reports results from a longitudinal field experiment examining the evolution of consumer-brand relationships. Development patterns differed, whereby relationships with sincere brands deepened over time in line with friendship templates, and relationships with exciting brands evinced a trajectory characteristic of short-lived flings. These patterns held only when the relationship proceeded without a transgression. Relationships with sincere brands suffered in the wake of transgressions, whereas relationships with exciting brands surprisingly showed signs of reinvigoration after such transgressions. Inferences concerning the brand's partner quality mediated the results. Findings suggest a dynamic construal of brand personality, greater attention to interrupt events, and consideration of the relationship contracts formed at the hands of different brands.B ecause of its relevance and potential for insight generation, the relationship paradigm has enjoyed much resonance among marketing academics and practitioners. To date, however, research that examines relationships within the evolutionary context that defines them has been limited. Longitudinal field experiments have been particularly sparse, leaving unanswered many foundational questions regarding the factors that make relationships lasting and strong. Empirical investigations have also favored application domains where relationships are actively constructed by human partners, thereby especially limiting our understanding of the influences that operate in the context of consumers' relationships with brands. One factor affecting relationship strength that has received much attention concerns the transgressions that befall long-term relationships. Studied primarily within the services field, this research operates on the assumption that the response to the transgression, and not the transgression itself, is of critical importance to relationship quality and course (Hart, Heskett, and Sasser 1990). Questions thus remain as to the effects *Jennifer Aaker is associate professor of marketing and

Although technological products are unavoidable in contemporary life, studies focusing on them in the consumer behavior field have been few and narrow. In this article, we investigate consumers' perspectives, meanings, and experiences in relation to a range of technological products, emphasizing lengthy and repeated interviews with 29 households, including a set of first-time owners. We draw on literatures spanning from technology, paradox, and postmodernism to clinical and social psychology, and combine them with data collection and analysis in the spirit of grounded theory. The outcome is a new conceptual framework on the paradoxes of technological products and their influences on emotional reactions and behavioral coping strategies. We discuss the findings in terms of implications for theories of technology, innovation diffusion, and human coping, and an expanded role for the paradox construct in consumer research.

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This research responds to the attendant need for empirical evidence pertaining to how marketing affects firm performance. Using the Fama-French method, common in finance, and a leading marketplace measure of a brand’s financial equity value, the authors provide empirical evidence for the branding-shareholder value creation link. The results extend previous research by showing that strong brands not only deliver greater returns to stockholders than does a relevant benchmark but do so with less risk. This finding holds even when market share and firm size are considered.