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

Abstract

Brand love is a relationship between brands and consumers. Managing the relationship is an important issue for marketing strategy since it changes according to temporal flow. Brand love theories, including their dynamics, have been developed based on interpersonal romantic love theories. Although many brand love studies have provided useful findings, the neural mechanism of brand love remains unclear. Especially, its dynamics have not been considered from a neuroscience perspective. The present study addressed the commonalities and differentiations of activated brain regions between brand love and interpersonal romantic love relationships using a quantitative neuroimaging meta-analytic approach, from the view of brain connectivity. Regarding the mental processes of each love relationship related to these activated brain regions, decoding analysis was conducted using the NeuroQuery platform to prevent reverse inference. The results revealed that different neural mechanisms and mental processes were distinctively involved in the dynamics of each love relationship, although the anterior insula overlapped across all stages and the reinforcement learning system was driven between both love relationships in the early stage. Remarkably, regarding the distinctive mental processes, although prosocial aspects were involved in the mental processes of interpersonal romantic love relationships across all stages, they were not involved in the mental processes of brand love relationships. Conclusively, although common brain regions and mental processes between both love relationships were observed, neural mechanisms and mental processes in brand love relationship dynamics might be innately different from those in the interpersonal romantic love relationship dynamics. As this finding indicates essential distinctiveness between both these relationships, theories concerning interpersonal romantic love should be applied cautiously when investigating brand love relationship dynamics.

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“…Using a quantitative neuroimaging meta-analytic method, Watanuki (2022) examined the similarities and differences between the brain regions that were active in brand love and interpersonal romantic love relationships. The findings demonstrated that each romantic connection is supported by a unique collection of brain mechanisms and mental processes [25]. Brand love has been demonstrated to affect the attitudes and behaviours of people with respect to brand loyalty [27], and brand loyalty increases when a consumer loves a specific brand [14].…”

“…Behavioural loyalty refers to a consumer repeatedly purchasing that brand. When examining the dynamics of brand-love relationships, theories on interpersonal romantic love should be used with caution [25]. Another way to study brand love is through two different streams of research.…”