Consumer-brand relationships encompass several dimensions, most of which have attracted growing research attention during the last years. Building these relationships is especially important in the marketing 3.0 era, where it is suggested that customers will choose those brands that satisfy their deepest needs. With these ideas in mind, this article provides a review of two key concepts implied in such relationships: brand love and customer engagement. Although both conceptions focus on different stages of consumer-brand relationships, they actually cover different perspectives on the same process. Moreover, they come from diverse conceptual paradigms: whilst brand love comes from the psychology discipline, engagement derives from diverse areas of the marketing field (e.g., the service-dominant logic perspective). However, their further empirical developments have taken place in marketing. Besides, both terms appear to be applied to different empirical perspectives: brand love is usually linked to the Fast Moving Consumer Goods industry and customer engagement to services.
This research investigated the effect of the food values, positive anticipated emotions, attitude toward the brand, and attitude toward eating a hamburger on purchase intention in fast-food restaurants in Mexico conjointly. The purpose of this study was to discover which variables influenced the consumer´s intention to buy. Data was collected from a survey of 512 Mexicans fast-food consumers. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized associations. The results showed that food values and positive anticipated emotions absolutely impact the attitude toward the brand, which impacts the purchase intention of the Mexican consumers. Nonetheless, the positive anticipated emotions impact stronger than food values, and the best way to get a purchase intention is toward the attitude of the brand rather than attitude toward eating a hamburger. The authors discussed inferences and suggestions for consumer approaches.
1 July 2010 in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services