Introduction to the Special Issue: Brand Relationships, Emotions, and the Self

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Previous articleNext article FreeBrand Relationships, Emotions, and the SelfIntroduction to the Special Issue: Brand Relationships, Emotions, and the SelfC. Whan Park and Deborah J. MacInnisC. Whan Park Search for more articles by this author and Deborah J. MacInnis Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreWhy Brand Relationships, Emotions, and the Self?Brands and Brand RelationshipsOur interest in this special issue is grounded in the early work on brands and brand relationships (Gardner and Levy 1955; Park, Jaworski, and MacInnis 1986; Fournier 1998) and the growing academic and practitioner interest in understanding how consumers feel, think about, interact with, and form relationships with brands (see MacInnis and Folkes [2017] for a recent review). We realized that interest in consumer-brand relationships applies to all types of brands: product brands, service brands, corporate brands, celebrity brands, entertainment brands, place brands, and nonprofit brands. This expansive scope on the domain to which the word “brand” applies is important for several reasons. First, brands of all types can be integral to consumers’ lives, the goals they seek, the identities they build, the emotions they experience, and the resources they have at their disposal (e.g., Schouten and McAlexander 1995; Dinnie 2004; Thompson and Arsel 2004; Muniz and Schau 2005; Fournier 2010; Janiszewski and Warlop 2017). Second, all types of brands can accrue financial and nonfinancial benefits that build the brand’s equity (e.g., Keller 1993; Aaker 2009). Third, each type of brand can build brand relationships by enabling, enticing, and enriching customers (Park, MacInnis, and Eisingerich 2016).Brand Relationships and the SelfWhereas brands and brand relationships can be described along any number of dimensions (e.g., Aggarwal 2004; Fournier 2009), our interest centers on the dimension of the brand’s self-relevance. Self-relevance concerns the extent to which the brand is deemed personally meaningful and significant in fulfilling psychological, utilitarian, hedonic, social, symbolic, or even spiritual goals. Brands that are highly self-relevant resonate with consumers’ current concerns, life projects, or life experiences (Huffman, Mick, and Ratneshwar 2000; Keller 2012). Self-relevant brands can become strongly connected to one’s self (Escalas and Bettman 2005; Park et al. 2010). Some connections between the brand and the self are so strong that the concept of “self” includes the brand (Belk 1988; Reimann and Aron 2009). Consumers are likely to engage with self-relevant brands frequently (Brodie et al. 2011; Gallup 2011), making such brands highly salient or prominent in memory (Park et al. 2010). Consumers are not the only beneficiaries when their brand relationships are self-relevant. As noted above, firms benefit as well. Consumers are more likely to remain loyal to, pay a price premium to acquire, and engage in positive brand advocacy in supporting those brands that are most self-relevant (Park et al. 2010).Self-Relevant Brands and EmotionsMoreover, when brands are relevant to consumers’ goals and strongly connected to the self, consumers should connect with these brands emotionally (Thomson, MacInnis, and Park 2005). By virtue of their role in goal fulfillment, self-relevant brands should have the potential to elicit strong and positive emotions that tie directly to and implicate the self (Brown and Marshall 2001). We call them self-relevant emotions. They include love (Batra, Ahuvia, and Bagozzi 2012), trust, pride, awe, gratitude, and happiness. Strong and positive emotions evoked by self-relevant brands should also be motivational. They should evoke brand attachment (Park et al. 2010; Park, Eisingerich, and Park 2013) and motivate not just repeat purchase, but also the psychological and affective commitment observed through positive brand advocacy behaviors and brand community involvement (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001; Wang 2002; Muniz and Schau 2005; Sung and Choi 2010).Yet, we also realized that not all brand relationships are positive (Fournier 1998; Fournier and Alvarez 2012). Indeed, self-relevant brand relationships can be described on a continuum that ranges from strong and positive, to neutral, to negative brand-self connections (Fournier 1998; Escalas and Bettman 2003; Park et al. 2013). When a brand is highly self-relevant and it evokes positive feelings, consumers are likely to develop a positive and strong relationship with the brand. When the brand’s relevance to self is weak, consumers are likely to feel indifferent toward the brand, in terms of both their emotions and their behaviors. When the brand’s relevance to the self is strong but negative, consumers can experience strong and negative brand affect. Rather than feeling attached to the brand, they experience brand aversion (Park et al. 2013). Rather than experiencing strong positive emotions, one experiences strong negative emotions toward the brand (e.g., anger, embarrassment, shame, and disgust; Johnson, Matear and Thomson 2010). In short, we saw growing interest in brands and brand relationships that implicate the self and evoke strong self-relevant emotions.The Research Landscape on Brand Relationships, Emotions, and the SelfIn light of the prior research on brands, relationships, and the self, we believed (and still do) that we have an opportunity to deepen our understanding of topics at the center of this brand-self-relationship nexus. Indeed, we realized that we have just scratched the surface on the types of questions that can be considered. To frame some of the interesting and relevant issues, we developed figure 1. The figure pictorially depicts what we saw as interesting research opportunities about brand relationships, emotions, and the self: opportunities that drove this issue’s call for papers.Figure 1. Formation and change of consumer-brand relationship.View Large ImageDownload PowerPointSelf-Relevant Relationship-Building Brand ActionsIn particular, we saw considerable potential to deepen our understanding of how a brand’s relationship-building actions influence self-relevant emotions, and how such emotions affect the valence and strength of the brand’s connection to the self (see fig. 1). Indeed, whereas prior research has examined the consumer and equity-building benefits of building strong brand relationships, we know considerably less about what drives such relationships in the first place. How do marketing actions like aspirational branding strategies, brand personality characteristics, brand aesthetics, logos, and brand meaning influence the valence and strength of brand relationships? Do they do so by virtue of the self-relevant emotions they evoke? How should the brand’s utilitarian functions, hedonic qualities, symbolic meanings, and values be best managed so as to induce strong and positive brand-self connections?Self-Relevant EmotionsMoreover, we saw considerable opportunity to explore the emotional and motivational aspects of consumers’ relationships with self-relevant brands. When brands are self-relevant by virtue of their link to goal attainment, goal fulfillment should result in emotions that also implicate the self (Brown and Marshall 2001). Emotions like gratitude, excitement, joy, nostalgia, pride, relief, inspiration, trustworthiness, respect, and love can arise when brand-building actions implicate a desired self and enhance goal fulfillment. Likewise, emotions like fear, anxiety, embarrassment, guilt, shame, disgust, regret, and anger can result when brands implicate an undesired self or fail to enhance self-relevant goals.We saw an opportunity to deepen our knowledge of the types of emotions evoked in brand relationships characterized by varying degrees of self-relevance. Since not all emotions are equally self-relevant and since self-relevance influences the strength and valence of self-brand relationships, we need to identify and focus on key emotions that critically affect these relationships. We also saw an opportunity to better understand the mediating role of self-relevant emotions on the relationship between brand-building actions on the one hand, and the valence and strength of brand-self connections and strong brand relationships on the other (see fig. 1).Interesting questions pertinent to self-relevant emotions include the following: What kinds of self-relevant emotions are implicated in positive or negative brand relationships? What is the role of relationship-oriented states like trust (mistrust), love (hate), and respect (contempt) in developing positive (negative) consumer-brand relationships? Just as the primary colors (i.e., red, yellow, and blue) and their combination create secondary and tertiary colors, relationships based on different levels of trust, love, and respect may lead to distinct types of consumer-brand relationships. We also wondered whether it is more difficult to evoke certain kinds of self-relevant emotions than others when developing brand relationships? For example, is it more difficult to create brand respect than to create brand trust or brand love? If so, is this because the former is a self-conscious emotion that implicates the self both cognitively and affectively while the latter implicates the self only cognitively (as with trust) or affectively (as with love)?We wondered about the process(es) by which emotions influence the strength of brand relationships. Do self-relevant negative emotions like fear, anxiety, embarrassment, guilt, shame, disgust, regret, and anger exert an equal influence on valence and strength of consumers’ brand-self connections? We also wondered about whether consumer-relevant factors like age, reference group affiliation, temporal orientation, or self-construal could moderate the effects of a brand’s relationship-building actions on consumers’ self-relevant emotions.Self-Relevant Emotions and Brand Relationship ChangeFinally, whereas research to date has emphasized the formation of brand relationships, we realized that the valence and strength of brand relationships are not static; they are subject to change. Yet, as a field we have not focused on when, why, and how brand relationships change over time. We saw an opportunity to examine how brand-building actions might make brand relationships more stable over time. Such might be the case when brands continuously improve the brand’s benefits (and relevance to the self) over time. Brand relationships can change from positive to negative, as when the brand’s actions (or lack thereof) are viewed by consumers as entailing a serious transgression such as deception. Brand relationships can change over the life-course, as brands become more or less significant to consumers’ changing goals. Moreover, certain types of consumers (e.g., those with low self-esteem, those who are from interdependent cultures, those who are of a certain age) may be more versus less affected by a brand’s relationship-building actions than others.We also saw opportunities to examine whether and how certain emotions influence the changeability of brand relationships over time. For example, are brand relationships based on positive emotions like gratitude, nostalgia, pride, relief, inspiration, and love equally vulnerable or resistant to change? Do emotions that relate to self-esteem (e.g., pride, inspiration) have a greater influence on the duration of brand relationships characterized by high/low self-relevance than other emotions do? Brands that evoke excitement, for example, may initially have a strong impact on attachment-based brand relationships. However, excitement may be difficult to sustain over time (e.g., Reimann et al. 2012). A different relationship trajectory might occur when brands are self-relevant by evoking pride.In short, it was clear to us that we have much to learn about how self-relevant emotions can induce changes in the strength and valence over the course of a brand relationship as well as the moderating factors that influence such changes (see fig. 1).Articles in the Special IssueThe scope of research issues implied in figure 1 is broad and provocative. Fortunately, a set of the world’s most noted branding experts have risen to the challenge of expanding our knowledge in ways pertinent to figure 1. The composite set of papers does much to advance our thinking.OverviewAlbert and Thomson provide solid grounding both for the special issue and the historical literature base that undergirds it. They use text mining to analyze 287 research articles that comprise the consumer-brand relationship domain, including the articles in this special issue. Their analysis identifies constructs core to the literature on consumer-brand relationships (e.g., attachment, connection, identification, commitment, love, trust, loyalty) as well as constructs that are gaining interest among more niche audiences (transgressions, brand-self congruity, relationship quality). A similar analysis identifies core and niche emotions studied in the brand relationship domain (e.g., feeling loving, afraid, angry, passionate, excited, envious, sad, shame, and guilty). Analysis of the combined corpus also reveals seven research streams that have studied emotions in the context of brand relationships. The authors observe that from 1999 to 2015 various constructs have occurred more versus less frequently in the literature, with less emphasis over time on constructs like community and brand meaning and more on brand attachment. A general conclusion from their work is that academic interest in brand relationships, emotions, and the self is significant. This finding underscores the importance of the special issue. The authors identify myriad emotions that have been studied in the context of consumer brand relationships. They strongly suggest the need for more focused research on self-relevant emotions in the context of brand relationships. The articles in the special issue are on target with respect to this issue as well.Brand Relationship Building ActionsApproximately half of the articles in the special issue examine potential brand-building actions that might induce self-relevant emotions, foster brand-self connections, and build strong and positive brand relationships (see fig. 1). Zhang and Patrick consider brand nicknames (e.g., Big Blue for IBM, Chevy for Chevrolet, Rollie for Rolex) as potential drivers of self-relevant emotions and the strength of brand relationships. Their studies find that brand nicknames evoke positive brand-related emotions (e.g., affection, love) that influence both the brand’s cognitive closeness (self-brand connection) and salience (brand prominence): components of brand attachment. Cognitive closeness and salience also encourage consumers’ brand relationship maintenance behaviors. Based on their elegant conceptual framework and strong empirical results, the authors provide compelling insight into the use of brand nicknames as vehicles for building brand relationships.Malär, Herzog, Krohmer, Hoyer, and Kähr examine the potential limits of aspirational branding strategies (those designed to appeal to consumers’ ideal self). Consumers anticipate feeling better about themselves through the use of brands linked to an ideal self. However, activation of an ideal self can also make consumers feel envy toward those who are better than they are. Such mixed emotions leave consumers feeling ambivalent about the brand. But several factors moderate these effects; the size of the gap between the actual and ideal self and the extent to which the brand positions itself as holding agentic versus communal brand values. Their results suggest that marketers need to understand aspects of consumers (ideal brand self-congruity; the discrepancy between one’s actual and ideal self) and the values that underlie the brand’s meaning in the marketplace (agentic vs. communal) when using aspirational branding strategies.Park and John consider whether consumers with weak brand relationships can actually become more engaged and more emotionally attached to a brand after a brand transgression than before. This counterintuitive effect is hypothesized to depend on consumers’ implicit beliefs about whether relationships can grow over time. Consumers who hold such growth beliefs make the effort to engage with the brand following a transgression. If the brand responds positively, consumers who initially felt a weak connection with the brand become more emotionally attached to the brand because of its relationship-building actions. An important implication of this research that marketers should understand is that consumers vary in their beliefs about how brands should respond to brand transgressions. Those marketers who respond in relationship-building ways can turn weak brand relationships into stronger ones, even if a brand transgression occurs.Aggarwal and Shi examine marketers’ use of loyalty programs in building strong and positive brand relationships. In particular, the authors investigate how demoting a consumer’s status in a loyalty program (e.g., losing “elite status” on an airline loyalty program) influences consumers’ brand evaluations. They propose that this effect of a demotion depends upon whether the consumer’s relationship with the brand is monogamous (i.e., they are loyal to this brand only) or polygamous (they are loyal to a set of brands). Consumers who have a monogamous relationship with the brand are angrier and more upset by a loss of status than are consumers in a polygamous brand relationship, and hence feel less positively about the brand as a result. Restoring elite status also exerts stronger effects on consumers who are monogamous versus polygamous in their brand relationship. However, the reinstatement of elite status does not fully compensate for the initial loss of status and the resultant anger that the monogamous consumers felt. The results suggest that when it comes to changing the status of consumers in a loyalty program, marketers need to understand whether target consumers’ brand relationship is monogamous versus polygamous. A demotion of status is regarded as worse for consumers who are monogamous, and restoring status may never leave monogamous consumers feeling the same way about the brand.The Role of Self Relevant Emotions on Brand Relationship Valence and StrengthThe last four papers in the special issue focus squarely on emotions and their implications for building brand-self connections and strong brand relationships. Williams, Coleman, Morales, and Cesareo examine how two positive emotions—awe and pride—can differentially impact consumer self-brand connections (SBC) for luxury versus social benefit brands. They find that incidentally induced feelings of awe create stronger brand-self connections for social benefit brands than for luxury brands. The reverse is observed for incidentally induced pride. The mechanism driving these effects has to do with how awe (vs. pride) makes one feel small or diminished (vs. large and superior). Feelings of awe create a diminished self and an awareness of entities as bigger than oneself, making consumers more open to brands with social benefits (vs. luxury brands). Pride, in contrast, enhances one’s sense of self as superior to others, making consumers more amenable to forming connections with luxury (vs. social benefit) brands. It is worth highlighting that consumers seek connections with companies in ways that transcend materialistic self-oriented benefits in favor of meaningful, others-centered values. This implication is consistent with Park et al.’s (2013, 2016) point that consumers want to develop deep emotional relationships not only with functional and hedonic brands, but also those that fertilize and nourish their soul. A second implication is that such connections can be facilitated or hindered by incidentally induced emotions.Ahuvia, Garg, Batra, McFerran, and de Diesbach also study pride; but here in the context of integral pride evoked from brand ownership. Using a new surfacing methodology, they develop a novel framework that shows that pride of ownership can build five aspects of consumers’ identity: cultivating personal taste, achieving adult independence, achieving social status, building close relationships, and connecting to groups. These five implicit identity goals are ordered in terms of their correspondence with an independent self-identity (i.e., personal taste) versus an interdependent self-identity (i.e., social roles and connecting to groups). Using a series of depth interviews, the authors find that people take pride in those brands, products, and consumption experiences that both reflect who they are and shape who they want to be. Finally, the authors document how consumers’ pride in the things they own can both increase and decrease over time, and in unexpected ways. This paper not only offers an enhanced perspective on how pride of brand ownerships builds brand-self connections; it also provides complementary perspectives on how brands can enrich the self (see Park et al. 2013, 2016).Whereas the previous two papers emphasized positive emotions and their impact on brand-self connections, the next two papers emphasize negative emotions. Lamberton, Kristofferson, and Dahl offer novel insights into how envy affects consumers’ attraction to products and brands. They find that the impact of envy on consumers’ attraction to desirable brands depends on whether consumers are high vs. low in self-esteem. Specifically, low-self-esteem consumers cope with the negative experience of envy by withdrawing from and denigrating brands. High-self-esteem consumers preserve or enhance their relationship with a desired brand when experiencing envy. As such, while using envy to foster brand relationships and to motivate a purchase can be successful with higher self-esteem consumers, this tactic may backfire when consumers are low in self-esteem. These negative effects of envy on brand relationship attraction are, however, limited to conditions of malicious (vs. benign) envy; specifically, when the envied other is undeserving (vs. deserving) of their status. Providing external opportunities to self-affirm in ways other than brand or product denigration also reduces the negative consequences of envy among low-self-esteem consumers. The clever experiments and thoughtful theorizing by the authors make for a strong contribution to the literature on brand relationships, emotions, and the self.Reimann, MacInnis, Folkes, Uhalde, and Pol ask whether brand betrayal is an extreme form of brand dissatisfaction or a distinct state experienced differently from dissatisfaction. The fact that both states can lower brand trust, weaken brand relationships, and evoke consumer revenge makes this question pertinent. Using a large-scale psychometric study and a functional neuroimaging experiment, the authors show that brand betrayal and brand dissatisfaction can be differentiated in terms of neural and emotional/psychological reactions. Brand betrayal (vs. dissatisfaction) is associated with self-relevant emotions of psychological loss, anger at the self over one’s prior relationship with the brand, indignation-focused versus frustration-focused anger toward the brand, and rumination about the brand and its betraying actions. The neurological results support these emotional reactions. These differences suggest that compared with brand dissatisfaction, brand betrayal is likely to be more harmful to both the brand and the brand relationship and with longer lasting consequences. This work is novel in shedding light on how brand betrayal is experienced by consumers at a phenomenological and neural level.ConclusionAt the risk of seeming premature, we offer several general conclusions from the set of papers:1. Marketers should carefully examine their branding strategies (e.g., brand nicknames, aspirational branding strategies, loyalty programs) as well as recovery tactics in building and changing brand relationships. The efficacy of such tactics may well depend on the characteristics of the target market (e.g., their implicit theories about relationships, self-esteem, monogamous vs. polygamous loyalty status), the type of product they are marketing (e.g., a social good vs. a status good), and the nature of the transgression (betrayal vs. dissatisfaction).2. Positive emotions, induced incidentally or through explicit marketing actions, can influence the strength and valence of brand relationships. However, positive emotions are not always equivalent in how they implicate the self (e.g., they can enhance or diminish the self). Pride may be a particularly powerful emotion in building brand relationships, particularly given its multifaceted role in building brand-self connections.3. Negative emotions induced from a brand’s actions can threaten the strength of brand relationships. However, distinct forms of negative emotions (malicious vs. benign envy) can have different influences on the strength and valence of brand relationships. Consumers can experience negative reactions not only toward the brand (e.g., anger at the brand) but also related to the self (e.g., feelings of loss, anger at the self).4. Brand transgressions, by themselves, need not be always bad for brands. 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