Sana Javed, Dr. Usamah Iyyaz Billah
Vol 18 | Issue 1 pp. 25-41
Abstract
This research study examines retailer brand equity on the basis of customer brand engagement with the mediating effect of brand love and brand trust. The main objective of this study is to find how customer’s engagement, interaction and trust lead to an increased Retailers Brand Equity.
The study has been conducted using a consumer lens whereby it also gives recommendations as to how a brand can control and utilize its customer brand engagement to develop superior customer intimacy and build long term brand equity. This research also exhibits how brand trust acts as a mediator to build strong relationships between the retailer and customer. One of the major aims of this study is to enrich the literature regarding the study variables and developing a clearer picture regarding their relationship with one another. Specifically, the path through the mediating role of Brand Love is a comparatively novel one, as previous researches mainly rely on brand intimacy and loyalty.
The data was collected through questionnaires from 300 respondents, consisting of consumers of leading retail chains. Data analysis was done using Process Hayes double mediation model 4 in SPSS. The study makes a theoretical contribution by applying the attachment theory to a new avenue of behavioural research. It will help understand how the interaction between brands/retailers and their customers contribute towards their long term bonding and mutual trust. Brands can use the findings of this research to better understand the art of creating valuable relationships with their customers.
Keywords: Retailer Brand Equity; Brand Love; Brand Trust; Customer engagement; Attachment theory
This article may be downloaded from the following locations:
References
Aaker, D. A. 1991. Managing Brand Equity. The Free Press, New York.
Aksoy, L. 2013. How do you measure what you can’t define? The current state of loyalty measurement and management. Journal of Service Management, 24(4), 356-381.
Albert, N., & Merunka, D. 2013. The role of brand love in consumer‐brand relationships. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 30(3), 258-266.
Algharabat, R., Rana, N. P., Alalwan, A. A., Baabdullah, A., & Gupta, A. 2019. Investigating the antecedents of customer brand engagement and consumer based brand equity in social media. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 53.
Anselmsson, J., Burt, S., & Tunca, B. 2017. An integrated retailer image and brand equity framework: re-examining, extending, and restructuring retailer brand equity. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 38, 194-203.
Batra, R., Ahuvia, A., & Bagozzi, R. P. 2012. Brand Love. Journal of Marketing, 76(2), 1-16.
Belaid, S., &Temessek, B, A., 2011. The role of attachment in building consumer-brand relationships: an empirical investigation in the utilitarian consumption context. J. Prod. Brand Manag., 20(1), 37-47.
Bowlby, J. 1969. Attachment and loss. (OKS Print.) New York: Basic Books.
Bowlby, J. 1979. On knowing what you are not supposed to know and feeling what you are not supposed to feel. Can. J. Psychiatry, 24(5), 403-408.
Business Insider. 2017. More than 3600 stores will close in 2018 – here’s the full list. Bus. Inside (Available at). 〈http://www.businessinsider.com/stores-closing-in-20182017-12〉.
Carroll, B. A., & Ahuvia, A. C. 2006. Some antecedents and outcomes of brand love. Marketing Letters, 17, 79-89.
Delgado‐Ballester, E., & Munuera‐Alemán, J. L. 2005. Does brand trust matter to brand equity. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 14(3), 187-19.
Dwivedi, A. 2015. A higher-order model of consumer brand engagement and its impact on loyalty intentions. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 24, 100-109.
Fedorikhin, A., Park, C.W., & Thomson, M. 2008. Beyond fit and attitude: the effect of emotional attachment on consumer responses to brand extensions. J. Consum. Psychol., 18(4), 281-291.
Fournier, S. 1994, A Consumer-Brand Relationship Framework for Strategic Brand Management, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Florida.
Fournier, S. 1998. Consumers and their brands: Developing relationship theory on consumer research. Journal of Consumer Research, 24, 343-373.
Gil-Saura, I., Ruiz-Molina, M. E., Michel, G., & Corraliza-Zapata, A. 2013. Retail brand equity: a model based on its dimensions and effects. The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 23(2), 111-136.
Giovanis, A. 2016. Consumer-brand relationships’ development in the mobile internet market: evidence from an extended relationship commitment paradigm. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 25(6), 568-585.
Giovanis, A. N., & Athanasopoulou, P. 2018. Consumer-brand relationships and brand loyalty in technology-mediated services. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 40, 287-294.
Grauer, Y. 2014. Three highly effective word-of-mouth marketing tactics. www.verticalresponse.com/blog/3-highly-effective-word-of-mouth-marketing- tactics/.
Gustafsson, A., Johnson, M.D. and Roos, I. 2005, “The effects of customer satisfaction, relationship commitment dimensions, and triggers on customer retention”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 69 No. 4, pp. 210-218.
Gwin, C. F. 2009. The impact of trust and brand relationship quality on perceived value and loyalty in a consumer goods environment. Retrieved April, 14, 2010.
Hollebeek, L. D., & Chen, T. 2014. Exploring positively- versus negatively-valenced brand engagement: a conceptual model. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 23(1), 62-74.
Hollebeek, L. D., Glynn, M., & Brodie, R. J. 2014. Consumer brand engagement in social media: conceptualization, scale development and validation. Journal of Interactive Marketing 28(2), 149-165.
Huang, X., Huang, Z., & Wyer Jr, R.S., 2017. The influence of social crowding on brand attachment. J. Consum. Res. 44(5), 1068-1084.
Hwang, J., & Kandampully, J. 2012. The role of emotional aspects in younger consumer‐brand relationships. Journal of Product & Brand Management.
İlter, B., Bıçakcıoğlu, N., & Yaran. I. O. 2016. How Brand Jealousy Influences the Relationship between Brand Attachment and Word of Mouth Communication. Acta Universitatis Danubius. Communication, 10(1).
Ismail, A. R. 2017. The influence of perceived social media marketing activities on brand loyalty: The mediation effect of brand and value consciousness. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 29(1), 129-144.
Jankowski, P. 2013. 4 tactics to build your word of mouth. www.foretailer brand equitys.com/sites/pauljankowski/2013/03/13/4-tactics-to-build-your-word-of-mouth/#1e2722d72 745 (accessed July 15, 2016).
Keiningham, T. L., Rust, R. T., Lariviere, B., Aksoy, L., & Williams, L. 2018. A roadmap for driving customer word-of-mouth. Journal of Service Management, 29(1), 2-38.
Laroche, M., Habibi, M. R., Richard, M. O. 2012. The effects of social media based brand communities on brand community markers, value creation practices, brand trust and brand loyalty . Computers in Human Behavior, 28(5), 1755-1767.
Loureiro, S. M. C., Ruediger, K. H., & Demetris, V. 2012. Brand emotional connection and loyalty. Journal of Brand Management, 20(1), 13-27.
Machado, J. C., Vacas-de-Carvalho, L., Azarc, S. L., Andréd A. R., Santos, B. P. 2019. Brand gender and consumer-based brand equity on Facebook: the mediating role of consumer-brand engagement and brand love. Journal of Business Research, 96, 376-385.
Mende, M., Bolton, R. N., & Bitner, M. J. 2013. Decoding customer–firm relationships: how attachment styles help explain customers’ preferences for closeness, repurchase intentions, and changes in relationship breadth. J. Mark. Res., 50(1), 125-142.
Moliner-Velázquez, B., Fuentes-Blasco, M. & Gil-Saura, I. 2019. Effects of value and innovation on brand equity in retailing. Journal of Brand Management, 26(6), 658-674.
Moorman, C., Deshpande, R. & Zaltman, G. 1993. Factors Affecting Trust in Market Research Relationships. Journal of Marketing, 57, 81-101.
Morgan, R. M., & Hunt, S. D. 1994. The commitmenttrust theory of relationship marketing. Journal of Marketing, 58(3), 20-38.
Nunnally, J.C. 1978. Psychometric theory. (2nd edition). McGraw-Hill, New York.
Pappu, R., & Quester, P. 2006. A consumer‑based method for retailer equity measurement: results of an empirical study. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 13(5), 317-329.
Pappu, R., Quester, P. G., & Cooksey, R. W. 2005. Consumer-based brand equity: improving the measurement – empirical evidence. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 14(3), 143-154.
Park, C. W., MacInnis, D. J., Priester, J., Eisingerich, A. B., & Iacobucci, D. 2010. Brand attachment and brand attitude strength: Conceptual and empirical differentiation of two critical brand equity drivers. J. Mark. 74(6), 1-17.
Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. 2004. Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 18(3), 5-14.
Rather, R. A. 2019. Consequences of consumer engagement in service marketing: An empirical exploration. Journal of Global Marketing, 32(2), 116-135.
Rather, R. A., & Sharma, J. 2017. The effects of customer satisfaction and commitment on customer loyalty: Evidence from the hotel industry. Journal Of Hospitality Application and Research, 12(2), 41-60.
Rotter, J. B. 1967. A new scale for the measurement of interpersonal trust. Journal of Personality, 35, 651-665.
Roy, S. K., Eshghi, A., & Sarkar, A. 2012. Antecedents and consequences of brand love. Journal of Brand Management, 20(4), 1-8.
Sahin, A., Zehir, C., & Kitapci, H. 2012. The effects of brand experience and service quality on repurchase intention: The role of brand relationship quality. African Journal of Business Management, 6(45), 11190.
Sashi, C. M. 2012. Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, and social media. Management decision, 50(2), 253-272.
Stever, G. S., & Lawson, K. 2013. Twitter as a way for celebrities to communicate with fans: Implications for the study of parasocial interaction. North American journal of psychology, 15(2).
Stojanovic, I., Andreu, L., & Curras-Perez, R. 2018. Effects of the intensity of use of social media on brand equity. European journal of management and business economics.
Sürücü, Ö., Öztürk, Y., Okumus, F., & Bilgihan, A. 2019. Brand awareness, image, physical quality and employee behavior as building blocks of customer-based brand equity: consequences in the hotel context. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 40, 114-124.
Sutter, B. 2015, “5 ways to maximize word-of-mouth marketing”, available at: www.entrepreneur.com/ article/251576 (accessed July 15, 2016).
Swaminathan, V., Page, K. L., & Gürhan-Canli, Z. 2007. My brand or our brand: The effects of brand relationship dimensions and self-construal on brand evaluations. Journal of consumer research, 34(2), 248-259.
Thomson, M., MacInnis, D.J., Park, C.W. 2005. The ties that bind: measuring the strength of consumers’ emotional attachments to brands. J. Consum. Psychol. 15(1), 77-91.
Troiville, J., Hair, J. F., & Cliquet, G. 2019. Definition, conceptualization and measurement of consumer-based retailer brand equity. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 50, 73-84.
Turri, A. M., Smith, K. H., & Kemp, E. 2013. Developing affective brand commitment through social media. Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, 14(3).
Veloutsou, C. 2015. Brand evaluation, satisfaction and trust as predictors of brand loyalty: the mediator-moderator effect of brand relationships. Journal of Consumer Marketing.
Vernuccio, M., Pagani, M., Barbarossa, C., & Pastore, A. 2015. Antecedents of brand love in online network-based communities. A social identity perspective. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 24(7), 706-719.
Wang, Y. C., Qu, H., & Yang, J. 2019. The formation of sub-brand love and corporate brand love in hotel brand portfolios. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 77, 375-384.
Wisnalmawati, W., Rahadhini, M. D., Unnazir, M. F., Putra, P. A., & Hendrato, M. L. 2019. Social Media Influence on Word of Mouth Mediated by Brand Awareness Online Retails. In ASEAN/Asian Academic Society International Conference Proceeding Series (pp. 32-37).
Wu, J. F., & Tian, Z. L. 2008. The impact of selected store image dimensions on retailer equity: evidence from 10 Chinese hypermarkets. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 16(6), 486-494.
Yoo, B., & Donthu, N. 2001. Developing and validating a multidimensional consumer-based brand equity scale. Journal of Business Research, 52(1), 1-14.
Zhou, F., Mou, J., Su, Q., & Wu, Y. C. J. 2020. How does consumers’ perception of sports stars’ personal brand promote consumers’ brand love? A mediation model of global brand equity. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 54(2).
