The role of emotional brand attachment in creating long lasting consumer brand relationships

Abstract

This thesis is premised on Mehrabian and Russell’s (1974) stimulus-organism-response (SOR) paradigm. More specifically, the study proposed and tested a conceptual model, aimed at understanding the role of emotional brand attachment and its influence on brand repurchase intention in the mobile phone category. Mobile Phones are the 21st century invention that has resulted in a change in the way the world operates and functions daily. The mobile phone industry in South Africa is the second biggest mobile market in Africa. (Business Tech, 2017). Due to consumer sever changing lifestyles, there is an increase in the demand for mobile devices that can meet their needs and wants. The many functions that mobile devices have nowadays has resulted in an increased dependency on them. Modern consumers have developed an emotional connection to brands. Customers are repeatedly attracted towards a brand based on the brand self-connection (Chaplin & John, 2005). One of the challenges faced by marketers today, is ensuring consumers repurchase in an era of saturated markets and fierce competition between brands. In the search for profitable organic growth, marketers are creating and cultivating positive emotional brand attachment for customers to increase the loyalty to a brand. The thesis proposes a model where customer brand self-connection influences emotional brand attachment which is hypothesized as a key mediator in the relationship between brand loyalty, brand trust, brand love and brand repurchase. This study followed a positivist research philosophy (Thomas, 2011), and undertook a deductive, descriptive research design using a quantitative approach with a survey method to deliver needed results. A questionnaire was distributed to a stratified random sample of 300 students from Witwatersrand University in Gauteng, South Africa. The primary objective of this study is therefore to determine the influence of emotional brand attachment on brand love, brand trust and brand re-purchase intention in the mobile phone industry among millennial students within the Johannesburg metropolitan area and how this creates long-lasting brand-consumer relationships. The results of the study show that emotional brand attachment was found to have a positive influence on brand love and brand trust, all factors that showed a positive relation to brand loyalty. Brand loyalty was then determined to have a positive influence on the intention to repurchase by consumers, a fact that is instrumental in the building and maintaining of long brand-consumer relationships. The implications of the findings are discussed, and limitations and future directions are suggested as well. Key recommendations are made, which provide marketers with significant insights into the effectiveness of emotional brand attachment in connecting with Millennials