Conceptualising the effect of brand love on consumers' repurchase intentions for consumer products

This conceptual paper discusses the theoretical intricacies of the relationship between brand love and consumers' repurchase intention. Consumer emotions towards brands, such as love and likeability, are seen as pivotal to longer-term consumer-brand relationships. Some marketing research advances the potential for brand love to generate positive consumer emotions towards a brand, such as consumer gratitude, directly impacting consumer repurchase intentions and, ultimately, improved business performance. However, there is research alerting for possible negative effects on consumers from building strong emotions, such that the implementation of brand love strategies by business must be exercised with caution and requires deep understanding of the concept. Are brand love and brand likeability distinct concepts with distinct effects on repurchase intentions? Considering types of products differentiated by their search, experience and credence qualities, a framework is developed to examine the relationship between brand likeability, brand love, and their relative effect on consumer repurchase intention. Attention is also given to consumer gratitude as a moderator of the effects of brand love on repurchase intentions.