Extant research suggests that consumers can become emotionally attached to consumption objects, including brands. However, a scale to measure the strength of consumers' emotional attachments to brands has yet to be devised. We develop such a scale in Studies 1 and 2. Study 3 validates the scale's internal consistency and dimensional structure. Study 4 examines its convergent validity with respect to four behavioral indicators of attachments. Study 5 demonstrates discriminant validity, showing that the scale is differentiated from measures of satisfaction, involvement, and brand attitudes. That study also examines the scale's predictive validity, showing that it is positively associated with indicators of both commitment and investment. The limitations of the scale and the boundary conditions of its applicability are also discussed.

Research has not verified the theoretical or practical value of the brand attachment construct in relation to alternative constructs, particularly brand attitude strength. The authors make conceptual, measurement, and managerial contributions to this research issue. Conceptually, they define brand attachment, articulate its defining properties, and differentiate it from brand attitude strength. From a measurement perspective, they develop and validate a parsimonious measure of brand attachment, test the assumptions that underlie it, and demonstrate that it indicates the concept of attachment. They also demonstrate the convergent and discriminant validity of this measure in relation to brand attitude strength. Managerially, they demonstrate that brand attachment offers value over brand attitude strength in predicting (1) consumers' intentions to perform difficult behaviors (those they regard as using consumer resources), (2) actual purchase behaviors, (3) brand purchase share (the share of a brand among directly competing brands), and (4) need share (the extent to which consumers rely on a brand to address relevant needs, including those brands in substitutable product categories).Keywords: brand management, consumer behavior, marketing strategy, brand attachment, attitude strength . As a construct that describes the strength of the bond connecting the consumer with the brand, attachment is critical because it should affect behaviors that foster brand profitability and customer lifetime value (Thomson, MacInnis, and Park 2005). At the same time, marketers have long invoked the constructs of attitude valence and strength as key antecedents to consumer behavior. We define attitude valence as the degree of positivity or negativity with which an attitude object (in the current context, a brand) is evaluated. We conceptualize brand attitude strength as the positivity or negativity (valence) of an attitude weighted by the confidence or certainty with which it is held (i.e., the extent to which it is considered valid; see Petty, Briñol, and DeMarree 2007). Strong attitudes result from effortful thought about the attitude object (Petty and Cacioppo 1986), most often because of its personal relevance. This effortful thought and the confidence with which the attitude object is held guide behavior. Prior research has shown that brand attitude strength predicts behaviors of interest to firms, including brand consideration, intention to purchase, purchase behavior, and brand choice (Fazio and Petty 2007; Petty, Haugtvedt, and Smith 1995;Priester et al. 2004).The rich history of research on brand attitude strength raises questions about the need for a construct such as brand attachment. Does attachment provide value beyond measures of brand attitude strength? The answer to this question is elusive because research to date has not verified how brand attachment and brand attitude strength differ conceptually or empirically. Nor has research differentiated what unique consumer behaviors, if any, each predicts.The current researc...

Mental imagery is receiving increased attention in consumer behavior theory and research. This article describes imagery, characterizing it as a processing mode in which multisensory information is represented in a gestalt form in working memory and discusses research on the unique effects of imagery at low levels of cognitive elaboration. It specifies researchable propositions for the relationship between high elaboration imagery processing and consumer choice and consumption behaviors Finally, it reviews specific methods for studying imagery.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Petty and Cacioppo (1986; see also Maclnnis and Jaworski 1989) identify two roles for advertising executional cues. One is to match executional cues to consumers' information-processing levels. For example, when consumers are unlikely to deeply process brand information from an ad, the use of salient affect-laden executional cues may have a positive effect on ad and brand attitudes. Conversely, when consumers do deeply process the advertised message, different cues (e.g., strong message arguments and cues that support the advertised message) lead to favorable brand attitudes. American Marketing AssociationA second role for advertising executional cues, and the role explicitly examined here, is to enhance consumers' motivation, opportunity, and/or ability (MOA) to process information from an ad. This second role is proactive, seeking to change the level of processing through the use of executional cues. Enhanced levels of processing may be desirable for two reasons. First, the level of processing in the modal viewing context (1) facilitates the organization and synthesis of much of the (heretofore) disparate research on executional cues, (2) provides a theoretical account for categorizing executional cues as similar in their information-processing outcomes, (3) allows for the identification of novel executional cues that have not been the subject of past research, and (4) identifies important research questions about executional cues and processing outcomes. Further study of the impact of executional cues on enhanced MOA and processing from ads requires measures of motivation, ability, and opportunity. Unfortunately, measures of those constructs are not well developed.The purpose of our article is fourfold. First, we review research on motivation, opportunity, and ability and their impact on brand information processing from ads. Second, we develop a conceptual framework that organizes executional cue research in terms of the cues' impact on motivation, ability, and opportunity, brand processing, and communication outcomes. Third, we identify key issues in measuring motivation, opportunity, and ability. Finally, we discuss research issues linked to the framework and the proposed measures.The Role of Motivation, Opportunity, and Ability in Ad Processing Figure 1 indicates that certain communication outcomes are influenced by the extent of brand information processing from ads. Brand information processing is in turn influenced by consumers' motivation, opportunity, and ability levels. Though motivation, opportunity, and ability are present prior to ad exposure, their levels can be enhanced by ad design strategy. Ad design strategies consist of informationprocessing goals, executi...

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