Indian adolescents’ customer relationship with food brands: exploring the role of brand love

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

PurposeThis paper intends to contribute to the evolving understanding of Indian adolescents as consumers by examining their unique relationships with food brands, focusing specifically on brand love. It further investigates the key drivers that cultivate brand love among adolescents and explores the resulting outcomes of brand love.Design/methodology/approachAbout 37 in-depth interviews, including three exercises, were conducted with adolescents aged 11–16. The first and second exercises used projective techniques to explore respondents’ culture-bound love relationships with their favorite brands. Using the laddering technique, the third exercise investigated the critical drivers of respondents’ brand love.FindingsThe study reveals that adolescents derive value through attribute-benefit-value linkages from the consumption experience, leading to brand love. The customer value–brand love dynamics result in adolescents’ customer engagement behavior. Additionally, Indian adolescent customers seek brand consumption as a medium to instate their social identity and achieve hedonic pleasure from the experience. The study highlights the role of socialization and attitudinal autonomy in shaping adolescent–brand interactions.Originality/valueThe study could be relevant for both academicians and practitioners as they unveil the consumer psychology of contemporary adolescents in emerging countries like India and how similar or different they are from adult consumers. Also, there are very few adolescent–brand relationship studies in the past that have been deliberated in the context of food brands. Brand managers may design their product development and communication appeals around higher levels of abstraction in the attribute-benefit-value linkages discovered by this study.