Brand loyalty: exploring self-brand connection and brand experience

Date12 March 2018
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-07-2016-1281
Published date12 March 2018
Pages172-184
AuthorLiezl-Marié van der Westhuizen
Subject MatterMarketing,Product management,Brand management/equity
Brand loyalty: exploring self-brand connection
and brand experience
Liezl-Marié van der Westhuizen
University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to determine one explanation for how the self-brand connection is associated with brand loyalty through the brand
experience. Brand experience should verify the self-brand connection by acting as a mechanism through which a self-brand connection is associated
with brand loyalty.
Design/methodology/approach Data were obtained from 317 adults through paid Facebook Boosting of an online survey and analyzed using
structural equation modeling.
Findings Analyses conrm that brand experience fully mediates the association between self-brand connection and brand loyalty.
Research limitations/implications Ensuring a positive brand experience is critical for brand managers opting to maintain consumersself-brand
connections and brand loyalty. Causality suffered owing to the cross-sectional design of the study.
Practical implications Self-brand connection is viewed as consumer-driven. However, by identifying the brand expe rience to verify the self-brand
connection and as a factor that mediates the self-brand connectionloyalty relationship of consumers, brand experience is recognized as a new
factor which brand managers can control to manage self-brand connections and brand loyalty.
Originality/value This paper is the rst to apply the self-verication theory to the self-brand connectionloyalty relationship by explicating brand
experience as a mediator of this relationship. This paper argues self-verication is not context-specic and lived experiences with the brand,
irrespective of context, establish consumerbrand relationships. This paper conrms the second-order factor structure of the brand experience scale
(Brakus et al., 2009) as a mediator in this self-brand connectionloyalty model.
Keywords Brand loyalty, Brand experience, Self-brand connection, Self-verication theory
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Mahatma Gandhi acknowledged the relevance of self-
verication theory by saying, Happiness is when what you
think, what you say and what you do are in harmony.As
consumers we strive for such consistency in our views of
ourselves, that is, our self-concept. Brands which have been
incorporated into our self-concept require that our resulting
behavior and experiences must align with the self-concept to
minimize psychological discomfort. Such self-verication
provides a sense of prediction and control over the social
environment, and it is therefore, important for establishing an
accurate and reliableself-concept (Swann and Read, 1981).
Consumers have an innate drive to dene and express
themselves through the purchases they make. Based on
McCrackens (1989) theory of meaning, meaning is transferred
from the culturally constituted world to brands and then onto
consumers. Seminal work has indicated that consumers direct
their behavior to maintain or enhance their self-concept (Grubb
and Grathwohl, 1967), where self-concept refers to the way
consumers think and feel about who, and what, they perceive
themselves to be (Rosenberg, 1981). Consumersself-concept
can be linked to a brand, resulting in self-brand connections
(Escalas and Bettman, 2003). These self-brand connections are
very subjective, consumer-driven personal relationships.
Self-brand connection is dened as the degree to which
consumers incorporate the brand into theirself-concepts (Escalas
and Bettman, 2003), which results in varied intensity levels of
consumerbrand relationships (Fournier, 1998). For example, a
consumer with a strong self-brand connection to Apple may view
himself as thinking differently, linking his behavior and self-
concept to Apples slogan and may feel like an innovator, linking
his status to Apples as an innovation leader. He therefore adopts
Appleasawaytocreate,portrayandexpress these characteristics
of the self-concept through consumption of the brand. So,
consumers may describe the brand experience associated with
brands through relationships (Schmitt et al., 2015), thus
demonstrating the association between self-brand connection
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/1061-0421.htm
Journal of Product & Brand Management
27/2 (2018) 172184
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-07-2016-1281]
The contribution of two postgraduate students for data collection, namely,
Ms Robin Baptiste and Ms Michelle Du Plessis, as well as Macaroon
Collections Facebook page for data collection purposes, is deeply
appreciated and acknowledged. Furthermore, the author gratefully
acknowledges Professor Jenny Hoobler, Professor Stella Nkomo, Professor
Julie Ruth and Dr Jacques Nel, as well as two anonymous reviewers of the
Journal of Product and Brand Management, for constructive comments on
previous drafts of this manuscript.
Received 29 July 2016
Revised 24 November 2016
23 February 2017
10 May 2017
Accepted 12 May 2017
172

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