Store love in single brand retailing: the roles of relevant moderators

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how various retail store atmospheric cues can impact store brand loyalty (SBL) via eliciting store brand love. This paper posits that different store brand experiential cues can predict brand love only when the experience is processed based on perceiving the brand as human-like entity, i.e. brand anthropomorphization. Brand love cannot be strongly elicited without the sense of brand anthropomorphization. Moreover, brand love can impact brand loyalty intention only under the moderating condition of perceived firm’s positive relationship marketing orientation. Design/methodology/approach Survey was conducted among urban shopping mall consumers, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings The findings support that store brand experience elicited by store environmental cues can better predict store brand love when the store is perceived as human, and store brand love can better predict conative SBL when consumer perceives that the store is having a positive relationship orientation. Originality/value The value of the paper lies in empirically testing the psychological mechanism through which store atmospheric cues lead to SBL.

Role of brand experience in shaping brand love

“…The authors discussed that future researchers can explore the role of additional antecedents like brand image in determining brand love. The effect of brand love on active engagement and loyalty intention was discussed by Sarkar and Sreejesh (2014) and Sarkar et al., (2019), respectively, in their studies. Also, the effect of brand engagement on loyalty intention was studied by Dwivedi (2015).…”

Brand anthropomorphism, love and defense: does attitude towards social distancing matter?

“…Consumers start defending the brand (Sashittal & Jassawalla, 2019). Moreover, when consumers perceive a brand to be human-like, they start loving it (Sarkar et al, 2019) and defending it (Wang et al, 2019). In their empirical investigations, Rauschnabel and Ahuvia (2014) and Ferreira (2020) confirmed a significant impact of brand anthropomorphism on brand love and brand defense, respectively.…”

“…Brand anthropomorphism has been studied within branding literature. However, there is a lack of scales available to measure brand anthropomorphism (Sarkar et al, 2019). While some scholars used physical attributes of a human body, i.e.…”

“…Measurements and common-method variance Brand Anthropomorphism was measured using five statements and adapted from Sarkar et al (2019). Brand Love was investigated using seven statements and adapted from Ismail and Spinelli (2012).…”

Fashion Brand Love: Application of a Cognition–Affect–Conation Model

“…Thus, developing brand love is considered as a primary goal for customer relationship marketing (CRM) and brand management (Pawle and Cooper 2006). Accordingly, there has been a substantial amount of academic research on brand love and its relationship to consumer behaviors such as shopping/brand experiences (Pandowo 2016;Sarkar et al 2019), purchase intentions (Fetscherin 2014;Pawle and Cooper 2006), brand loyalty (Alnawas and Alrarifi 2015;Drennan et al 2015;Fournier 1998;Huang 2017;Thomson et al 2005;Wallace et al 2014), brand trust (Albert and Merunka 2013;Langner et al 2015), positive word-of-mouth (Karjaluoto et al 2016;Wallace et al 2014), and willingness to pay (Albert and Merunka 2013;Thomson et al 2005). Fournier (1998) argued that consumers are capable of emotionally bonding with certain brands in a similar manner to developing interpersonal relationships and her claim was supported by later research that found consumers can build emotional connections with brands just like developing love in a relationship (Carroll and Ahuvia 2006;Wallace et al 2014).…”