Brand Love as Mediator of the Brand Experience-Satisfaction-Loyalty Relationship in a Retail Fashion Brand

Abstract

Framed by the consumer-brand relationship theory, this paper investigates the path from the brand-consumer behaviour interaction to the relationship durability and stability, through brand relationship quality. Specifically, it examines brand experience as an antecedent of brand love, and customer loyalty and satisfaction as outcomes in the retail setting. Based on 560 customers' responses to a face-to-face questionnaire administered in a fashion brand retail store, research hypotheses were tested using a structural equation model. The findings suggest that brand experience influences brand love, with a higher incidence of sensory and affective dimensions. Brand love, in turn, influences customer loyalty, both directly and indirectly through customer satisfaction. This research contributes to the still understudied relation between brand experience and brand love in the retail context and to the need to understand the satisfaction-loyalty relation involving other variables as predictors. Nevertheless, results are limited to one specific retail fashion brand and generalizations should be taken carefully.This outcome in the form of the brand relationship quality starts, however, in the interaction between brand and consumer behaviours. The set of actions taken by both the consumer and the brand initiates a process of meaning creation, elaboration and reinforcement (Fournier, 1998). This process may be understood as the set of experiences lived by the consumer. Thus, creating meaning, elaborating and reinforcing is consistent with the notion of brand experience, conceptualized as "subjective, internal consumer responses (sensations, feelings, and cognitions) and behavioural responses evoked by brand-related stimuli that are part of a brand's design and identity, packaging, communications, and environments" (Brakus, Schmitt, and Zarantonello 2009, p. 53). The processes of meaning creation, elaboration and reinforcement, which can be encapsulated in the concept of brand experience, contribute to the strength and durability of the brand-consumer relationship (Chang and Chieng, 2006;Schembri, 2009).Among the positive feelings, love is considered one of the most strong brand relationships, going beyond the simple notion of brand preference (Fournier, 1998). But despite this strength, only recently it caught the attention of researchers (Ahuvia et al. Maxian et al., 2013). Brand love is the result of strong emotional relationships that can be considerably more intense than simple liking, although there are fundamental similarities between interpersonal love and love in consumer contexts (Ahuvia, 2005).Despite the evidence suggesting the importance of brand love, there is still few evidence of how brand experience can influence such a positive feeling as brand love. In fact, research has examined several antecedents of brand love, such as interpersonal antecedents (Long-Tolbert and Gammoth, 2012), brand image and social-self (Unal and Aydin, 2013), brand personality (Ismail and Spinelli, 2012), brand identification and bra...

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