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Purpose -This research aims to explain consumer attraction to brands when stimulation needs are paramount using the perspective of the Self-Expansion Model. In doing so, it seeks to identiy brand romance -a more proximal construct to brand loyalty and aims to offer a complementary perspective to understand emotional attachment to brands. Design/methodology/approach -A series of four studies developed and validated a three-factor, 12-item measurement scale for brand romance using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Reliability, convergent, criterion, discriminant and nomological validities were established. Findings -Brand romance is a reliable, valid, and a more proximal construct that explains loyalty significantly better than attitudes. Research limitations/implications -Student subjects constitute the sample and the findings are cautiously generalizable to adult populations. Future research should focus on teasing out product category effects, extending generalizability to other product categories and integrating the Attachment Theory perspective with the study's findings to offer a more comprehensive explanation for loyalty. Practical implications -Consumers are likely to remain loyal to brands to which they are attracted. The brand romance construct captures this attraction. Marketers need to infuse their brands with novel perspectives, resources and identities on a continuous basis to satisfy stimulation needs and keep the attraction strong. This involves creating new brand associations that help the brand to stay relevant. Originality/value -To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to apply the Self-expansion Model to brand relationships. The research contributes a unique perspective in explaining emotional attachment to brands brought on by stimulation needs. It fills a gap in the emotional attachment literature and provides marketers with a tool to monitor consumers' attraction to brands.

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:198285 [] For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a conceptual framework of attitudinal constructs that influence attitude toward the brand in movie product placements. Advertising literature is replete with studies on factors that influence attitude toward the brand (A b ). However, this topic remains under-explored for product placements. Design/methodology/approach -Our framework showcases several theories to relate attitude and fit constructs to attitudes toward the product placement and attitude toward the brand. We use the structural equation model approach to estimate the conceptual framework. Findings -Several attitudinal movie constructs (attitude toward the actor, the character and the movie) influence attitude toward the product placement, which in turn mediates the relationship between the former attitudinal constructs and attitude toward the brand. Interestingly, only the fit between the actor and placed brand impacted attitude toward the product placement, with no effects found for the fit between the character and the fit between the movie and brand and the attitude toward the product placement. Research limitations/implications -We focus on explicit attitudes; implicit attitudes need future research attention. Practical implications -Findings affirm a key role for the actor featured in the placement in directly or indirectly shaping the attitude toward the brand. Originality/value -This is the first study to apply the structural equation modeling approach to this research area.

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