‘Brand love’: The debate continues. . . .

What is there about “brand love” that surfaces from time to time to create a flurry of heated exchanges? In this issue, we publish the latest of these exchanges, sparked by a Viewpoint submitted by Junaid, Hou, and Hussain, that until now has only been published on the IJMR website as a forthcoming item. This has led to four further contributions, submitted either as further Viewpoints or Letters to the Editor. Therefore, I have decided to publish them all together—but after this, I would like to close down this latest debate.

As shown in the references within these submissions, the last exchange on this topic started in 2013, with a Viewpoint by Jenni Romaniuk, “What’s (brand) love got to do with it?,” in Vol. 55/2. It was a slow burn on that occasion as the response did not surface until 2015 in a further Viewpoint by Barker et al “The power of brand love” in Vol. 57/5, plus a reply from the original author.

What surfaced in the early debate was whether real “love” in a brand context exists, and if it does, can it be measured. None of the recent contributors referred to Zarantonello’s and Pauwels-Delassus’s excellent book, “The Handbook of Brand Management Scales” (Routledge, 2016), which contains in chapter 8, “Consumers’ emotions towards the brand,” sections covering brand love, brand romance, and love-jealousy, plus references to academic work in this field signs of at least one other debate on this topic, and a reference to the Romaniuk Viewpoint from 2013. As the authors point out, measures tend to focus on positive emotions to a brand (four of the six scales covered), with only one focussing on measuring negative emotions. I recommend that readers with an interest in this topic should look up this handbook, not only as it provides examples of sound academic research in this field including extensive references, but how the measures described can help managerial decision making.

Pertinent to this introduction to the latest round of the debate are the thoughts of Jeremy Bullmore, as contained in the collection of his essays “Apples, Insights and Mad Inventors” (Wiley, 2006) that were originally published over the years in the WPP annual reports. In one entitled “Posh Spice and Persil,” Bullmore reminds readers that the bit that adds real value to a product, the brand, belongs to the people who think about it, not the brand-owner: “Forget the marketing-speak. The image of a brand is no more nor less than the result of its fame: its reputation. And like a reputation, it can be found in only one place: in the minds of people.” He continues: “It’s 30 years or so since I first heard real people in group discussions talking openly and quite unselfconsciously about their favourite washing powder. But they didn’t just talk about Persil: they talked about my Persil.” I will leave you to decide if this is an expression of love, or simply an expression of deep trust. Bullmore steers clear of using the term “love” in the context of a brand, apart from a reference to what happens when a brand-owner “falls so deeply in love with his own [brand personality]” that they take the consumer for granted by ignoring the competition and failing to invest in the product: “Because when people discover what’s been done, that a once loved brand has taken its users for granted, those users will be totally and brutally unforgiving. And their desertion will have something of vengeance about it . . .” As in personal relationships, falling out of love (or a perceived betrayal of trust) can potentially lead to a messy outcome for a brand.

Therefore, it is interesting to investigate situations where brands have created harm and measure the impact on consumer behavior. We have published two such papers in the past by the same team of authors: “The effects of product-harm crisis on brand performance,” Ma et al (IJMR Vol. 52/4, 2010), which focussed on contaminated baby milk powder in China (Nestle brand) and “The impact of a product-harm crisis on customer perceived value” (IJMR Vol. 56/3, 2014) describing research to identify the impact of a major recall program by a car manufacturer (Toyota). In both cases, the issues are complex, and the impact can spread to competitors in more than one way. In the Toyota case, the effect on the brand seems to have been relatively short lived, but also “infected” some competitor brands. The impact was more profound in the Nestle case with brand switching and market volatility detected in the research. These maybe seen as extreme cases, but they do provide insight into what happens when trust in a leading brand is on the line.