An Investigation on How Brand Attachment and Brand Experience Affect Customer equity and Customer Loyalty Research motivation: In the recent years, many constructs have been developed in the field of branding. Among these constructs, which have received significant attention, is brand attachment (Thomson, MacInnis, & Park 2005; Park, MacInnis, Priester, Eisingerich and Lacobucci, 2010). In the marketing environment nowadays, customers are bombarded with hundreds of brands and brand-related stimuli every day. However, they are attached to a small group of brand with emotional bonds. Furthermore, the relationship between customers and brands and its strength has always been a challenge for researchers to understand and to measure. On the other hand, brand experience is considered to be an important construct because a better understanding of how customers experience brands can be very helpful when developing marketing strategies (Brakus, Schmitt & Zarantonello, 2009). Customer perceptions of value, brand and relationship constitute what is called customer equity drivers (Vogel, Evanschitzky & Ramaseshan, 2008). However, the research on how brand experience affects customer equity has not been well investigated. In addition, the relationship between brand attachment and customer equity and customer loyalty needs a closer examination. Research question: The main research question would be; can brand experiences and brand attachments build customer equity and contribute to customer loyalty, and how should marketers manage brands to create experiences and attachments that enhance and build customer equity and foster customer loyalty? Research objective: The research objective is to understand how brand attachment and brand experience influence brand equity, value equity and relationship equity, and how that can predict customer loyalty. Literature review: This study tries to present a model that encompasses two main categories of brand constructs; an emotional relationship concept, brand attachment, and a non-emotional concept, brand experience; that is, the affective part is represented by brand attachment which implies a strong emotional bond between a customer and a brand (Park et al., 2010). Moreover, the psychological theory (Bowlby, 1979) suggests that the degree of emotional
attachment to an object is an indicator of the nature of an individual s interaction with the object. Therefore, when customers develop strong emotional attachments to brands, they become committed to them, invest in them and show readiness to make sacrifices for them (Hazan & Shaver, 1994). On the other hand, according to Brakus et al. (2009), brand experience mainly does not involve a motivational state. Experiences occur not only when consumers have a personal connection with the brand but also when they do not show interest in that brand. Moreover, brands that evoke the strongest experiences are not necessarily the ones to which consumers are highly attached. However, as experiences are sensations, feelings, cognitions, and behavioral responses evoked by brand-related stimuli, brand experiences may result in emotional bonds over time which can be considered as just one internal outcome of the stimulation that evokes experiences. In addition, what yields brand experiences importance is that they do not occur only after consumption but also whenever there is a direct or indirect interaction with the brand. Therefore, this study is an attempt to investigate how far two important constructs from the branding theory from two categories, emotional and non-emotional, affect customer equity, the field where brand equity and customer equity come together. This study implies three basic constructs; brand attachment, brand experience and customer equity and each construct includes some sub-constructs. Brand attachment: When customers interact with a marketplace environment, they develop bonds attaching them with product brands (Keller, 2008). According to Park et al. (2010), brand attachment can be defined as "the strength of the bond connecting the brand with the self" and the conceptual properties of it can be displayed according to two important factors; brand-self connection and brand prominence. Brand-self connection: when identifying brands, customers try to match these brands with their self-images. Also, customers show a representation of their self-concept about the actual, ideal or future self and link this representation with the traits and characteristics associated with brands such as prestige (Chaplin & John, 2005). Essentially, brand-self connection is not just a cognitive connection. It has an emotional facet as well. This facet may include emotions such as sadness, happiness, anxiety, comfort and/or pride etc (Park et al., 2010). Brand prominence: the idea of brand-self connection develops over time causing the thoughts and feeling associated with it to become a part of a customer's memory. The ease and the frequency with which brand-related thoughts and feelings are brought to mind are called brand prominence (Park et al., 2010). Brand experience: fundamentally, experiences, according to Brakus et al. (2009), occur in different settings in the marketing environment. When customers search for products, when they shop and buy these products and when they consume them, these experiences are formed. Also, brand experiences can occur directly when there is physical contact with the product or indirectly when the customer is exposed to brand-related stimuli in advertising and marketing communication channels. These stimuli may include brand identifying colours, shapes, typefaces, background design elements, slogans, mascots and brand characters. In addition, the subjective internal customer response to these stimuli can be conceptualised into four dimensions; sensory, affective, intellectual and behavioral.
Customer equity: According to the work of Lemon, Rust and Zeithaml (2001), the notion of customer equity brings together three different and important fields; customer value management, brand management, and retention management. In their study, Rust, Lemon and Zeithaml (2004) proposed a model implying these elements represented with value equity, brand equity and relationship equity. A major strength of Rust, Zeithaml, and Lemon s (2000) work is that their model one of the first attempts to connect together the two research streams on brand equity and customer equity. Furthermore, Vogel et al. (2008) proposed a similar model including loyalty as a new construct. In this model, value equity represents the objective assessment of a brand according to the value given up for what is received, while the subjective side is represented with brand equity which denotes to the intangible assessment of a brand beyond the instrumental value of a brand. The third sub-construct, relationship equity, is expressed as the customer's tendency to maintain a relationship with a brand beyond the objective and subjective assessments (Vogel et al., 2008). Research hypotheses: According to Thomson et al. (2005), it is expected that strong attachments toward brands affect brand loyalty and induce a devaluation of competing alternatives and that means a higher tendency to stay in a relationship with the brand and this may enhance customer loyalty as a result. Thus this study predicts the following: H 1 : Brand attachment affects customer loyalty positively. Moreover, as customers tend to repeat pleasurable outcomes, it is expected that customers will repeat these favorable experiences and recommend them to others (Thomson et al., 2005). Therefore, this study predicts the following: H 2 : Brand experience affects customer loyalty positively. Equity theory suggests that perceived equity leads to positive affective states that may cause positive attitudes, such as loyalty (Adams, 1965). In addition, Vogel et al (2008) suggests that value equity has a positive impact on loyalty intention. Thus this study predicts the following: H 3 : Value equity affects customer loyalty positively. Bolton, Lemon, and Verhoef (2004) suggest that a favorable perception of a brand could have an impact on affective commitment. Moreover, Rust, Zeithaml and Lemon (2000) state that brand equity is likely to influence a customer s loyalty. Therefore, the following hypothesis can be proposed: H 4 : Brand equity affects customer loyalty positively. Consumers who compare their expectations with their experiences and believe that they are handled with care others are likely to be satisfied with the offering, brand, or store and therefore this will lead to more loyal customers (Gwinner, Gremler, & Bitner, 1998). Thus:
H 5 : Relationship equity affects customer loyalty positively. Keller and Lehmann (2006) call for further research in branding which ties companies' actions to customers' responses in terms of how they think and feel about the brand and what customers do with respect to the brand. Brand strategies can have significant influence on customer equity (Blattberg & Deighton, 1996). Moreover, Brakus et al (2009) call for further research in brand experience and customer equity. Therefore, this study suggests the following hypotheses: H 6 : Brand experience affects customer equity positively. H 6A : Brand experience affects value equity positively. H 6B : Brand experience affects brand equity positively. H 6C : Brand experience affects relationship equity positively. H 7 : Brand attachment affects customer equity positively. H 7A : Brand attachment affects value equity positively. H 7B : Brand attachment affects brand equity positively. H 7C : Brand attachment affects relationship equity positively. Conceptual model: According to the hypotheses aforementioned, the following conceptual model can be presented (See figure 1). Prominence Brand-self connection Customer equity Sensory Brand attachments Value equity Brand equity Loyalty Affective Brand experience Relationship equity Intellectual Behavioural Figure 1
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