Examining the effect of brand love on consumers’ repurchase intentions for consumer products

Consumer experiences and emotions, such as love and liking, towards brands are seen as pivotal to consumer–brand relationships, directly impacting consumer repurchase intentions and, ultimately, improving business performance. Much brand love research deals with conceptualisation. Some marketing research advances the potential for brand love to generate positive consumer emotions towards a brand, such as consumer gratitude. This thesis goes further, in that it aims to examine the theoretical intricacies of the relationship between brand love and consumers’ repurchase intentions, and answers two research questions: (1) what is the importance of brand love for marketing purposes? and (2) how can brand love be used in practice? After consideration of how types of products are differentiated by their search, experience and credence qualities, a framework has been developed to examine the relationship between brand likeability and brand love, on the one hand, and their relative effect on consumer repurchase intentions on the other. Attention is also given to consumer gratitude as a moderator of the effects of brand love on repurchase intentions. PLS analysis was performed to assess the hypothesised relationships. Empirical data were gathered through online questionnaires. The results showed a positive relationship between brand likeability and brand love. Both of them positively associate with consumer repurchase intentions for three product categories. However, the effect of brand love on consumer repurchase intention is different depends on product type. The thesis offers significant contributions to researchers and practitioners.