The Greatest Love Stories Between Consumers and Brands - A Study of Brand Love

Abstract: COURSE: BUSN29: Master Degree Project AUTHORS: Orkun Eti, Lysbet Doutzen de Boer SUPERVISOR: Mr. J. Bertilsson THESIS PURPOSE: The purpose of the study is to investigate how passionate consumers experience their brand relationship. With help of the photo elicitation technique we aim to evoke feelings, stories, and memories in order to provide a new perspective on the theory of brand love. METHODOLOGY: In-depth interviewing in combination with photo-elicitation. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE: Relationship Theory (Fournier, 1998), Brand Love (Albert et al. 2008, and Batra et al. 2012). PRACTICAL PERSPECTIVE: Lovemarks (Roberts, 2005) CONCLUSION: The interrogation study provided us with a richer understanding of consumers’ passion for brands based on previous research in both practical and theoretical fields. Our empirical study revealed three new dimensions of brand love with a non-interpersonal character. The findings indicated that brand-related, as well as ‘real’ non-interpersonal relationship dimensions had greater relevance to brand love than person-related dimensions.