Neural Substrates of Brand Love: An Activation Likelihood Estimation Meta-Analysis of Functional Neuroimaging Studies

Abstract

Brand love is a critical concept for building a relationship between brands and consumers because falling in love with a brand can lead to strong brand loyalty. Despite the importance of marketing strategies, however, the underlying neural mechanisms of brand love remain unclear. The present study used an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis method to investigate the neural correlates of brand love and compared it with those of maternal and romantic love. In total, 47 experiments investigating brand, maternal, and romantic love were examined, and the neural systems involved for the three loves were compared and contrasted. Results revealed that the putamen and insula were commonly activated in the three loves. Moreover, activated brain regions in brand love were detected in the dorsal striatum. Activated regions for maternal love were detected in the cortical area and globus pallidus and were associated with pair bonds, empathy, and altruism. Finally, those for romantic love were detected in the hedonic, strong passionate, and intimate-related regions, such as the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area. Thus, the common regions of brain activation between brand and romantic love were in the dorsal striatum. Meanwhile, no common activated regions were observed between brand and maternal love except for the regions shared among the three love types. Although brand love shared little with the two interpersonal (maternal and romantic) loves and relatively resembled aspects of romantic rather than maternal love, our results demonstrated that brand love may have intrinsically different dispositions from the two interpersonal loves.

The Neurobiological Basis of Love: A Meta-Analysis of Human Functional Neuroimaging Studies of Maternal and Passionate Love

“…Contrary to previous results [ 22 , 24 ], we found brain activation of the right medial prefrontal gyrus, right superior/middle/inferior temporal gyrus, and left amygdala when ALE methods were applied across several maternal love studies. These regions have been associated with social and emotional judgement, unless their functions were damaged by lesions [ 50 ].…”

“…The realm of human attachment has been predominantly defined as the interpersonal relationship [ 21 , 22 , 23 ]. A recent study extends the concept of attachment to the relationship between a person and an object and conducted a meta-analysis of love to investigate neural substrates of brand love which has been shown to reveal strong ties between consumers and brands (i.e., “brand attachment”) and compared it with those of maternal and romantic love [ 24 ]. The study, when the loose criterion was applied ( p < 0.001 uncorrected), reported that the brain regions of putamen and insula were commonly recruited for brand love, maternal love, and passionate love.…”

“…The study, when the loose criterion was applied ( p < 0.001 uncorrected), reported that the brain regions of putamen and insula were commonly recruited for brand love, maternal love, and passionate love. However, brand love appears to show different dispositions from the other two types of interpersonal love, with the brain activation of dorsal striatum for brand love whereas distributed cortical areas and globus pallidus for maternal love and NA and VTA for passionate love [ 24 ]. These results highlight the similarity and discrepancy between brand love and interpersonal love, however, the common and dissociable neutral substrates associated with maternal and passionate love from the neurobiological and evolutionary perspectives remain unclear.…”

Is brand love materialistic?

“…Early research on (what would later be called) brand love (Ahuvia, 1992(Ahuvia, , 1993(Ahuvia, , 2005Albert et al, 2008;Fournier, 1998) drew from psychological research on both interpersonal love (Aron et al, 1991) and consumer research regarding the role of favorite possessions in identity construction and interpersonal connections (Ahuvia, 2015;Belk, 1988;Belk and Coon, 1993;Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 1981). Ahuvia (2005) particularly stressed the importance of loved objects in constructing consumer identity, a finding that has recently been supported in a meta-analysis of neuroscience studies comparing brand love to interpersonal love (Watanuki and Akama, 2020). More recently, both Batra et al (2012) and Bagozzi et al (2016) have built on this early research to create and refine a measure of brand love that encompasses a wide variety of dimensions including, self-brand integration, passion-driven behaviors, positive attitudes, anticipated separation distress, long-term relationship focus and positive emotional connection.…”

Neural mechanisms of brand love relationship dynamics: Is the development of brand love relationships the same as that of interpersonal romantic love relationships?

“…Given that it was difficult to conduct the ALE using a cluster level threshold because of the insufficient sample size, the first ALE was performed using thresholds that were set as p > 0.001 (uncorrected) and a minimum cluster size of 100 mm 3 . These parameters are the same parameters used in our previous brand love-related study ( Watanuki and Akama, 2020 ). A more conservative threshold ( p > 0.0001; uncorrected) was applied when calculating ALE values using data from the brand love relationships in the stable stage.…”