Exploring behavioural branding, brand love and

Journal of Product & Brand Management Exploring behavioural branding, brand love and brand co-creation Hans Ruediger Kaufmann Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro Agapi Manarioti

Article information: To cite this document: Hans Ruediger Kaufmann Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro Agapi Manarioti , (2016),"Exploring behavioural branding, brand love and brand co-creation", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 25 Iss 6 pp. 516 - 526 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-06-2015-0919

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Exploring behavioural branding, brand love and brand co-creation Hans Ruediger Kaufmann School of Business, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus

Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro Marketing, Operations and General Management Department, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Cyprus, and

Agapi Manarioti


School of Business, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the complex consumer brand relationships by holistically exploring the dynamics between brand love and co-creation, how they are impacted by behavioural branding and their combined impact to brand loyalty. Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper, based on extensive and thorough literature review on the fields of brand love, behavioural branding, brand communities and co-creation, that leads to the formulation of a proposed synthesized framework. Findings – The authors propose that consumers experiencing brand love are more willing to engage in an active co-creating behaviour in the context of a brand community, especially when brand representatives vividly communicate the brand values and motivate consumers to engage. This process is moderated by the product/service category and level of customer involvement with it, and it produces a combined positive impact on brand loyalty. Research limitations/implications – The proposed conceptual framework needs to be validated through empirical research. However, even at this initial stage, it may have a significant impact, especially as it highlights the role of brand representatives and how they could drastically moderate the relationship between the brand and the consumer. Originality/value – This is the first attempt to incorporate the constructs that are significant to the consumer– brand relationship research stream in one conceptual framework. The synthesis of these concepts will contribute to the improved understanding of the consumer– brand relationship, and its dynamics and will equip managers with a novel approach to the central role of behavioural branding. Keywords Brand love, Brand loyalty, Brand communities, Brand co-creation, Behavioral branding Paper type Conceptual paper

From user to co-creator: the need for a paradigm shift

approach where building meaningful sustainable relationships with various stakeholders should be the core of any strategy (Balmer and Greyser, 2006). From this point of view, the brand becomes the experience (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004), and building strong, admirable corporate brands, that stakeholders can engage with, becomes the ultimate marketing objective. In this pursuit, the role of stakeholders in branding changes, and both customers and employees are seen as co-creators in shaping an organization’s offerings (Rungfapaisarn, 2011; Balmer, 2011). As marketing focus moves from unique selling propositions to emotions, relationships and communities, new terms are introduced in the marketing terminology, reflecting this novel dimension: brand love, behavioural branding and co-creation. In this business and social context where the stake is the development of sustainable relationships between the brand and its stakeholders, the most important question is as to “how do stakeholders relate to brands”. Researchers have proposed different factors to be crucial for this relationship, from the personality of the brand and the extent to which it expresses the values of consumers (Fournier, 1998; Aaker, 1997, 1999; Escalas, 2004; Escalas and Bettman, 2005; Wallace et al., 2014) to the trustworthiness of the brand (Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001; Delgado-Ballester and Munuero-Aleman, 2001, 2005; Esch et al., 2006). From a more evolutionary point of view, Schmitt (2012) describes this

For the past decades, researchers have been pointing to the urgent need for new marketing approaches transcending the narrow product-focused, one-way communication patterns. In his article, Grönroos (1994) foresaw a paradigmatic focal shift in marketing regarding the transition from the products and services era to the relationship building era (Grönroos, 1994), and a decade later Vargo and Lusch (2004) introduced the highly influential concept of service-dominant logic, as a platform underlying all transactions and relationships with consumers, regardless if the object is tangible or not. Later, Balmer and Greyser (2016) not only confirmed the Grönroos’ prediction but also suggested that this relationship marketing era has swiftly evolved into something new: a corporate-level marketing orientation pursuing a holistic institutional

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Journal of Product & Brand Management 25/6 (2016) 516 –526 © Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421] [DOI 10.1108/JPBM-06-2015-0919]

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consumer brand relationship as a three-tier construct: object-centred engagement, self-centred engagement and social engagement. Those “layers” reflect an understanding that different needs, motives and goals result in different psychological levels of engagement. In the first layer, the consumer– brand relationship is a functionally driven engagement; that is, the consumer “acquires information about the brand with the goal of receiving utilitarian benefits from the brand” (Schmitt, 2012, p. 8). In the second layer, the brand is related to the identity of the consumer, whereas on the third level, the brand provides a sense of community. From a similar perceptive, but incorporating the fledging concept of co-creation, Kaufmann et al. (2012a) illustrate the different roles of the consumer in the relationship with the brand, as follows: ● At the initial stage, the consumer shows a primal attraction to a specific brand and engages in collecting information about it, acting as a browser – a loose relationship similar to the object-centred layer of Schmitt’s model. ● As congruence between the consumer’s values and the brand is discovered and the latter evolves to a self-identification medium, the consumer becomes a mingler, a member of a community formed around the brand from people sharing the same values and ideas. ● At the final stage, termed by the authors as “resonance”, the consumer becomes an active member of the community, feeling the emotional obligation and commitment towards the group and participating in the creation of the brand and its value. At this point, the consumer– brand relationship is a social act, a reward itself reflecting the emerging need of belonging (Arnett et al., 2003).

ad can play a significant role (Holbrook and Batra, 1987; Buil et al., 2013), it is the congruence between the consumer, stakeholder and the brand values that nurture this relationship (Schmitt, 2012; Balmer, 2011; Kaufmann et al., 2012b). In the final stages of the aforementioned models – social engagement and resonance – consumers have a strong feeling of obligation towards the community and will engage in joint actions to accomplish collective goals (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001; McAlexander et al., 2002; Algesheimer et al., 2005; Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006; Schau et al., 2009; Kaufmann et al., 2012a). In this new context, where the role of the consumer is shifting from passive user to co-creator and active participant in the value process (Cherif and Miled, 2013) and the brands are becoming social symbols that signal a coherent group identity (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005), brand loyalty is determined by the extent to which value congruence exists (Thomson et al., 2005; Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006; Batra et al., 2012; Loureiro et al., 2012) and the intensity of participation in the brand community and the value creation processes (Casaló et al., 2008; Hatch and Schultz, 2010; Kaufmann et al., 2012a; Ind et al., 2013). Therefore, the significant role of the interrelationship between brand love, behavioural branding and co-creation emerges because of the “encounter and the cross-fertilization of subjective and psychological meaning-making processes between two or more actors, like brands and consumers” (Gambetti and Graffigna, 2015, p. 158) This perspective calls for an integration of both the customer (Yi and Gong, 2013) and the employees in this co-creation equation (Hatch and Schultz, 2010; Gambetti and Graffigna, 2015), but extant literature has paid little attention to the role of employees in the development of the relationship, despite how determinant they are in the expressiveness of the brand value and in the brand experience itself. Employees, when “living the brand” themselves, become part of the “meaning making process” and humanize the brand values and motivate consumers to engage (Morhart et al., 2009) Therefore, the aim of this article is to stimulate further research on consumer– brand relationships by exploring how behavioural branding practices might influence both, the quality of the emotional attachment between the two parts and the success of the co-creating process. Innovative findings will equip managers and academics with a novel approach to the role of leaders, brand managers and/or first line personnel to maximize and, ultimately, leverage brand loyalty for co-creation by authentic and mutually beneficial consumer– brand relationships.

For moving a consumer to the initial stage of the relationship of an object-centred engagement or basic attractiveness to the brand, traditional branding practices (e.g. advertising and promotions) are very effective, as the messages communicated through ads facilitate recall and recognition and support the goal of awareness (Keller, 1987; Lowrey et al., 2003; and Schmitt et al., 1993 in Schmitt, 2012). However, as the relationship becomes more self-related, it is the personality of the brand, the human characteristics attached to it (Aaker, 1997; Aggarwal and McGill, 2012) and the emotions developed through experience that define the nature of engagement. Traditional branding approaches focusing on unique selling propositions have become outdated, because of this very change in customers’ values and aspirations about the brands (Gobe, 2001 in Schmitt, 2012), and it is becoming increasingly obvious that appealing advertising is not sufficient anymore for a brand to be strong (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005). According to Keller and Lehmann (2003), it is not the advertising or marketing spending that distinguishes the strong brands, but how they relate to qualitative aspects. The functional characteristics of the brand, such as quality, do not guarantee its success (Buil et al., 2013; Bravo et al., 2007). As Holbrook and Batra (1987) suggested that at an early stage of the development of this research stream, the relationship between the consumer and the brand is based on the spectrum of different emotions induced, and although the content of the

Co-creating behaviour based on commitment According to the literature, strong brands are built through a co-creation process involving a number of players, especially brand managers and the brands’ consumers (Sherry, 1998; Brown et al., 2003; and Coupland et al., 2005 in Boyle, 2007), and are based on the overall brand experience, entailing a post-consumption social angle (Brakus et al., 2009) that constitutes a new set of benefits, the participation benefits (Ind et al., 2013). All the stakeholders of the (strong) brands engage in a marketing dialogue, which is key to achieving involvement and loyalty (Casaló et al., 2008; Hatch and Schultz, 2010). Brand loyalty is defined as: 517




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Dessart et al., 2015) that co-creation as an active social process of collaboration, sharing and participation in the context of the community, leads to loyalty. However, as there are also opponents to this approach (Wirtz et al., 2013) that place one aspect of co-creation, the generation of ideas, amongst the outcomes of brand loyalty, we expect our empirical research to provide us with a more conclusive answer. Of paramount importance in the co-creation process is the expansion of the social media that provided both the brands and the consumers with a communication platform and allowed the development of online communities (Cherif and Miled, 2013; Baldus et al., 2015, Wirtz et al., 2013, Vernuccio et al., 2015). As the theory of brand communities apply equally to online and offline contexts (Dessart et al., 2015), those communities have some constant characteristics explaining how and why a consumer might evolve from a buyer to a co-creator: a brand community is a set of individuals who voluntarily relate to each other for their interest in some brand or product. They are characterized by a consciousness of kind, a feeling that binds every individual to the other community members and separates them from the non-members, rituals and traditions shared among the members of the groups and a sense of moral responsibility commitment to the community and the members (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001). The interaction among the members, the participation to this community, fosters the development of a salient social identity (Vernuccio et al., 2015) and favours the development of emotional ties and the willingness to continue this relationship in the future and therefore, the willingness for loyalty (Casaló et al., 2008). From an extensive literature review on co-creation, it occurs that: ● For the co-creating behaviour to occur, an existing relationship between the consumer and the brand must pre-exist, a relationship characterized by strong emotions and value sharing (Kaufmann et al., 2012a; Casaló et al., 2008; Cherif and Miled, 2013; Dessart et al., 2015; Burmann and Zeplin, 2005; Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006; Wirtz et al., 2013; France et al., 2015). ● Apart from the engagement with and the selfexpressiveness of the brand, for a co-creating behaviour to develop, the consumer must feel commitment to the community (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001; Casaló et al., 2008; Kaufmann et al., 2012a) and trust that the brand is reliable and transparent (Casaló et al., 2008; Hatch and Schultz, 2010, Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). ● The co-creation process involves every employee in the company (Fournier and Lee in Hatch and Schultz, 2010) and not just consumers and marketers. In their two-axis model explaining the different levels of co-creation as the result of the dialogue access and risk, Hatch and Schultz (2010) stress the role of employees as access points to the brand and how their behaviour impacts the co-creation process.


[. . .] a deeply held commitment to rebuy or repatronize a referred product or service consistently in the future, despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behaviour (Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001).

Loyal consumers show more favourable responses to a brand while they resist switching to another (Yoo et al., 2000), and they are willing to pay a price premium, as they perceive some unique value, determined by brand trust or feeling elicited by the brand (Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001). Because of the complexity of co-creation as a concept, different approaches and definitions have been proposed in the literature, differentiating as to the importance of communities. For one school of thought, co-creation is about the customer-led interactions between the customer and the brand (France et al., 2015), the sum of the two elements, participation and citizenship (Yi and Gong, 2013), and a subjective meaning-making process (Gambetti and Graffigna, 2015), where brand communities might be influential but not a condition sine qua non (France et al., 2015). On the other hand, adopting a more collaborative approach, Ind et al. (2013), supported by Brakus et al. (2009) and the authors of this article, define co-creation as an active, creative and social process based on collaboration between organizations and participants that generate mutual benefits for all stakeholders (Ind et al., 2013, p. 9), as reflected by an active participation in a brand community (Kaufmann et al., 2012b) and influenced by the brand community principles (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001). From a customer’s perspective, this reveals the commitment and participation towards the entire business organization, finding: [. . .] effective representation in the willingness [of the consumer] to accept new products or a brand extension, and furthermore, to introduce new members to the community and to support and sustain the firm in moments of crisis. In this way, the consumer tends to serve as a brand missionary or ambassador attracting and captivating new members (Kaufmann et al., 2012b, p. 408).

Participants in the co-creation process are motivated by the sharing of common values and perceive a moral obligation towards the community. Following Fueller’s research on consumer personalities, consumers’ motivations for participation vary depending on personality, leading to different expectations towards co-creation. Consumers motivated by intrinsic rewards tend to participate more and be more knowledgeable and creative, as well as more interested in the co-creation process. Extrinsic rewards, on the other hand, are not regarded as very important in the virtual co-creation process (Füller, 2010). Finally, the holistic stakeholder approach (Hatch and Schultz, 2010) proposes that co-creation is the result of dialogue and access between the company and the stakeholders and organizational self-disclosure. However, any differences aside, the common ground for most co-creation researchers is that it is positively related to loyalty (Casaló et al., 2008; Hatch and Schultz, 2010; Kaufmann et al., 2012b). Although extant literature is inconclusive when it comes to the directionality of this relationship, drawing from the adopted definition, we propose what a solid stream of researchers from different angles – brand communities, their online equivalents and co-creation – implicitly accepts (Algesheimer et al., 2005; Zwass, 2010; Casaló et al., 2008; Hatch and Schultz, 2010; Boyle, 2007; Jung et al., 2014; Ind et al., 2013; Cherif and Miled, 2013;

In addition, the role of category involvement has been pertinent to this discussion in the relevant literature, and it has been proposed as an antecedent of co-creation (France et al., 2015), as consumers who are highly involved with the category are more motivated to co-create, because they perceive it as more fulfilling. Although the level of involvement is 518





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Brand love

significant – and very much related to the extent as to which the customer finds the category self-expressive – recent answers to the question posed by Albert et al. (2008) on whether some product categories are more capable of generating strong engagement (and love feelings) and, implicitly, influence the co-creating behaviour, posit that “there are no product category differences in terms of the directionality of the relationships between the different constructs such as brand love (and) brand loyalty [. . .]” (Fetscherin et al., 2014, p. 84), but it influences the intense of the relationship and, therefore, could alter the impact on brand loyalty. As, from an employee point of view, the effects of behavioural branding on brand success are more obvious in services than in FMCGs, we suggest that further research should focus on the impact of product category in the co-creation process, further validating the existing findings with empirical research in relation to co-creation. To sum up, co-creation as a social act of collaborative meaning-making can be of direct or indirect nature: in its direct form, it describes the interactions that occur between the customer and the brand, face-to-face as a part of the “in role” behaviour of the customer, without which the service cannot be delivered (Yi and Gong, 2013), or between community members and the brand (Ind et al., 2013). The level of reciprocity from the brand in this interaction – whether the brand representatives provide the community with feedback, updates, a clear purpose, etc. is regarded determinant for the overall success of the interaction (Ind et al., 2013; Gambetti and Graffigna, 2015). Indirect co-creation refers to participating in networks and community – although not directly communicating with the brand (Ind et al., 2013), providing assistance to other brand users (Yi and Gong 2013) or sharing social media content (France et al., 2015). Therefore, as co-creation is the result of a strong emotional engagement with the brand and its self-expressiveness (France et al., 2015) and the role of the brand representatives is crucial (Yi and Gong, 2013; Hatch and Schultz, 2010; Gambetti and Graffigna, 2015), there are two constructs that can be conceptually related to co-creation: brand love and behavioural branding. The former is characterised as the emotional outcome of self-expressiveness and brand attachment (Loureiro et al., 2012), two elements that emerge as significant for co-creation as well. The latter refers to the effort for the personnel to “live the brand” in a way that internal and external stakeholders are aligned (Gregory, 2007), and it is in line with the comment made by Hatch and Schultz (2010) that roles of organizational culture and management practices are relevant to the co-creation process. It is interesting in this context that the terminology used in the behavioural branding literature such as “in role” and “extra role” behaviour or “living the brand” is also used in the co-creation literature, mirroring a parallelism of the two situations (Yi and Gong, 2013; Ind et al., 2013). Before introducing our model exploring the relationships among co-creating behaviour, brand love and behavioural branding, we will attempt a short review of the latter concepts to illustrate their fundamental affinity to co-creation.

Brand love is a still new concept in the research stream of consumer– brand relationships, with a broad range of positive emotions and attitudes towards the brand (Batra et al., 2012), that helps explain and predict variation in desirable post-consumption behaviours among satisfied consumers (Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006). Those positive emotions and attitudes have been related to greater repurchase intentions (Thomson et al., 2005; Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006; Batra et al., 2012; Loureiro et al., 2012), less price sensitivity (Thomson et al., 2005; Batra et al., 2012), resistance to negative information about the brand (Batra et al., 2012) and engagement in positive word-of-mouth (Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006; Batra et al., 2012). Scholars identify the characteristics of brand love by proposing different sets of factors, depending on their respective definition of the concept. The most common approach is to relate brand love to interpersonal love and attempt to apply terms and definitions of the latter to brand love as a result of the fundamental similarities between those concepts (Ahuvia, 2005; Langner et al., 2016). Despite the popularity of this approach, there is some criticism focus on fundamental differences between brand and interpersonal love, starting from a finding that consumers do not use the exact word “love” when describing their feelings towards a brand, unless the researcher explicitly asks them to do so. In addition, two fundamental differences between the two constructs are, according to Batra et al. (2012): 1 Although interpersonal love tends to be altruistic and unconditional, participants in their research documented that this is not true for brand love – consumers take perceived excellence as a prerequisite. 2 Contrary to interpersonal love, brand love is a situation where reciprocity is not considered as mandatory, because brands are not expected to show “emotions”. In literature, it is currently discussed whether customers expect some kind of reciprocity from the brands they use. Consumers participate in the relationship motivated by intrinsic and/or extrinsic rewards related to the brand and a need to be heard and taken into consideration – a need that it is very much present in the co-creation literature as well (Ind et al., 2013). Following Arnett et al. (2003), the feeling of belonging in a like-minded, self-expressive community is a reward itself, reflecting the emerging need of belonging and the significance of the participation benefits (together with the functional, emotional and self-expressive ones) of the brand (Ind et al., 2013). In that vein, we propose that the aforementioned call for reciprocity can be answered by the rewarding co-creating process or jeopardized when brand representatives fail to reciprocate (like presented in the case study of Chino Sanpellegrino illustrated by Gambetti and Graffigna (2015), but further empirical research is suggested for more conclusive findings in this respect. In both, the interpersonal and the brand love framework, relationships are developed through time, and love is the ultimate outcome of a process, not an instant result (Albert et al., 2008; Huber et al., 2015; Langner et al., 2016). In the consumer– brand relationship context, given that consumers do not usually label their emotions towards brands as “love”, the brand love construct better describes a relationship 519





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between consumers and a brand rather that an episodic emotion (Batra et al., 2012). The definition provided by Carroll and Ahuvia (2006, p. 81) describing brand love as “the degree of passionate, emotional attachment a satisfied consumer has for a particular trade name” highlights passion and emotional attachment as two of the fundamental elements of brand love. Passion is the strong desire for a brand, reflecting the higher-arousal emotions (Batra et al., 2012), and it has been related to brand love (Albert et al., 2008) and emotional attachment (Thomson et al., 2005). The emotional attachment, on the other hand, a concept very proximate to brand love, is defined as the emotion-laden target-specific bond between a person and a specific object (Thomson et al., 2005). Attachment is a widely accepted element of brand love among researchers (Thomson et al., 2005; Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006; Albert et al., 2008; Batra et al., 2012; Loureiro et al., 2012). For Batra et al. (2012), and attachment is the emotional bonding with and connection to the brand that might even invoke separation distress, whereas based on Loureiro et al.’s (2012) model, brand attachment is an antecedent of brand love. In the literature, more factors can be found as being related to the brand love concept, such as affection (Thomson et al., 2005; Albert et al., 2008; Batra et al., 2012), positive emotions in response to the brand (Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006; Albert et al., 2008; Batra et al., 2012; Loureiro et al., 2012), satisfaction (Thomson et al., 2005; Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006), long time use (Thomson et al., 2005; Batra et al., 2012; Huber et al., 2015; Langner et al., 2016), perceived functional quality (Batra et al., 2012) and attitude strength (Batra et al., 2012). Self-related cognitions/self-expressiveness of the brand also have been among the antecedents of brand love, separating likeability from love (Batra et al., 2012). Researchers have now provided evidence that brands that are perceived to enhance one’s social life and/or reflect the inner self are positively related to the brand love outcome (Escalas and Bettman, 2005; Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006; Loureiro et al., 2012; Vernuccio et al., 2015; Huber et al., 2015). According to Carroll and Ahuvia (2006) and Loureiro et al. (2012), brand love is a result of the self-expressiveness of the brand and the hedonic character of the product in the first instance and brand attachment in the latter. Conclusively, when a brand represents values that are congruent with the consumers’ belief system, when it demonstrates characteristics that enhance the consumers’ self-image and their social substance and when it is related to strong and meaningful mental representations, this relationship between the brand and the consumer can be as strong, enduring and powerful as love.

the decisions and actions of the employees with any marketing effort becoming irrelevant without an “institutionalized internal brand management” (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005, p. 281). For the brand managers pursuing a dynamic consumer– brand relationship, influencing or controlling the perceptions of consumers about the brand is challenging and difficult (Boyle, 2007); what they can, however, do and control is to actively manage the brand identity part of this equation (Burmann et al., 2009), in a way, that consistently promotes the mix of employee behaviours that directly or indirectly determines brand experience (Brakus et al., 2009) and brand value (Henkel et al., 2007) to control the gap between internally and externally held brand perceptions (De Chernatony, 1999; Hatch and Schulz, 2010). Research documented that holistic brand experiences can be realized only if employees act both, in a functionally correct and brand conforming way (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005; Henkel et al., 2007). As functional employee performance is linked to the company performance, but does not contribute to the brand success (Henkel et al., 2007), for a brand to move beyond functional quality and reach holistic experience and identification levels and engage consumers to a co-creation process, employees need to move from mere functional performance to brand building behaviours (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005; Henkel et al., 2007; Morhart et al., 2009). This makes sense given that employees, especially those being in customer-contact roles, humanize the brand and, hence, with their behaviours can motivate customers to emotionally connect to it (Morhart et al., 2009). Those behaviours that influence brand experience are termed as behavioural branding, and they are related to higher service quality because of higher intrinsically motivated employees who identify themselves with the brand (Harris and De Chernatony, 2001; Henkel et al., 2007; Kaufmann et al., 2012b). This can be explained by research findings relating customer satisfaction to the quality of the interaction the consumer has with the employee (Hanna et al., 2004; Morhart et al., 2009). Based on constructs provided by Morhart et al. (2009), brand building behaviour consists of three important elements: in role brand building behaviour, extra role brand building behaviour and retention. In role brand building behaviour can be described as the willingness of the employees to follow the standards that have been prescribed by the management either in written, oral or other forms, an analogy to what Burmann and Zeplin (2005) termed as brand compliance and as formal marketing control (Jaworski, 1988 in Henkel et al., 2007). Extra role brand building behaviour refers to those brand-related actions that employees will perform beyond written guides and will indicate the identification with and internalization of the brand values (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005; Morhart et al., 2009), such as participation and positive word-of-mouth. The brand-based role identity is regarded salient “among the various role identities within a self-concept” (Morhart et al., 2009, p. 126) and can act as a motivator for the employees themselves to become active members of the brand community. Finally, retention refers to employees upholding their professional relationship with an organization as it facilitates the

The role of brand building behaviour As employees and stakeholders have been identified as significant elements of brand identity, internally held values, when internalized and expressed by the employees, will determine the strength of the brand (Burmann et al., 2009) and become the initiator of the co-creating behaviour (Hatch and Schultz, 2010; Boyle, 2007; Payne et al., 2009). The role of employees in brand building is regarded crucial because of the fact that many sources of the brand promise are based on 520





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development of close relationships between brand users and brand representatives. Henkel et al. (2007) propose informal marketing control and employee empowerment as the determinants of the quality of behavioural branding. Based on their research, employees need to find their own ways of brand representation, and they need personal training and coaching to do so rather than formal marketing control. Although being consistent with the finding of the significance of informal marketing control, Kaufmann et al. (2012b) found formal marketing control in a different cultural setting to be a significant factor. Also, role identity salience and value congruence are both important in the behavioural branding framework. Morhart et al. (2009) focused the research on the balance between leadership styles as the means to achieve value congruence and role internalization and, consequently, the determinants of the success of building brand-consistent behaviours. Applying the micro sociological concept of identity in terms of value internalization raises the question if more social benefits and care should accrue to employees rather than merely economic rewards (Kaufmann et al., 2007). Implicitly, behavioural branding influences the way consumers perceive the brand and form the brand image in their minds and the level to which this image communicates their personal values and aspirations. When brands become self-expressive, the relationship between the brand and the consumer is characterized by emotions and attitudes that have been labelled as “delight”, satisfaction” and “love” (Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006), and it provides the consumers with the necessary condition for engaging in the brand community. Also, as the question whether the brands should love their consumers back raises, social benefits and intrinsic rewards for the consumer can raise from the very relationship with the brand representatives, and they can be perceived as the way the brands returning the love – along with events, gifts, etc. of course. Following the view of Aggarwal and McGill (2012), when a brand is humanized and anthropomorphized and consumption becomes a social act, a real interaction, from this point of view, consumers engage themselves to a “give and take” relationship with the brand, enjoying a feeling of reciprocity.

by Carroll and Ahuvia (2006) categorizes brand attachment among the elements of brand love, following the model proposed by Thomson et al. (2005) that characterizes brand attachment in terms of three emotional components: affection, passion and connection. From our point of view, which concurs with Park et al. (2010, p. 9), brand attachment is more than emotions, “it is reflected by mental representations (rich cognitive schemata) that include brand-self cognitions, thoughts, and autobiographical brand memories that may not be captured by measures of emotions”. From this perspective, people (a term proposed by Christodoulides (2008) as an alternative to “consumers” when studying emotional relationships) love the brands that express their existing or desired identities and with which they maintain a bond based on cognitive schemata and representations (Park et al., 2010). Interestingly, in a recent study on online brand communities, brand passion, as the term selected to describe passionate emotional attachment to the brand, has been found to be an antecedent of online brand community engagement (Baldus et al., 2015), giving us the first sign of evidence that brand love is related to co-creation. Also, in a model explaining the antecedents and outcomes of co-creation, brand engagement and self-expressiveness (along with product involvement) are the proposed antecedents (France et al., 2015). Given the conceptual proximity of brand engagement to brand attachment, we are provided with a solid indication that brand love is related to co-creation. Outside the brand love context, two more elements related with the Loureiro et al. (2012) model, those of commitment to the community (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001; Casaló et al., 2008; Kaufmann et al., 2012a) and trust that the brand is reliable and transparent (Casaló et al., 2008; Hatch and Schultz, 2010, Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004) are also related to co-creation. On the other hand, when it comes to the nature of the relationship between brand loyalty and co-creation, there is no consensus yet, with a solid stream of the researchers, however (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001; Algesheimer et al., 2005; Casaló et al., 2008), posit that loyalty is the outcome of the strong bonds created in the context of a community, a proposition adopted in our model as well. Given that a strong relationship is based on shared values among the brand, the community, and the consumer are present in the co-creation process, a prior attachment to the brand is a prerequisite (France et al., 2015; Ind et al., 2013; Gambetti and Graffigna, 2015) and the role of commitment and trust in both brand love and co-creation frameworks, we propose a synthesized model, based on the one proposed by Loureiro et al. (2012), extended to explore the relationship between brand love and co-creating behaviour (Figure 1), directly and/or with the moderation of commitment to community and brand trust. Previous research studies have suggested and tested the role of brand trust as both, an antecedent (Albert and Merunka, 2013) and consequence (Regan et al., 1998; and Albert et al., 2008 in Skoog and Söderström, 2015; Loureiro et al., 2012) of brand love. It seems possible to take the stance that either perspective can be accepted: that is, a developing trustful relationship may enhance the love feeling, the passionate feeling for a brand; at the same time, when a consumer is very much in love with a brand, that emotional relationship (feeling good, happy, passionate about and attached to this brand) will

Proposed model As discussed, the starting point of co-creation is an existing relationship between the consumer and the brand, founded on shared values and identification that create a coherent group identity (Kaufmann et al., 2012a; Cherif and Miled, 2013; Burmann and Zeplin, 2005; Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006, France et al., 2015; Hollebeek, 2011) and the development of emotional ties (Casaló et al., 2008) that strengthen the community (Kaufmann et al., 2012a). At this point where the emotional ties, the affective aspect, come to the centre of attention in the co-creation literature, the concept of brand love arises with an ultimate impact on brand loyalty (Thomson et al., 2005; Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006, Batra et al., 2012; Loureiro et al., 2012). But what are the circumstances that nurture the brand love relationship? For our research, we adopt the model proposed by Loureiro et al. (2012) that proposes self-identification and brand attachment as the antecedent factors of brand love. The model earlier presented 521




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Figure 1 Initial model

contribute to developing stronger ties of confidence in such a brand (a reliable and dependable relationship). So, we suggest further investigating the research question as to brand trust being an antecedent or consequence of brand love by taking the context into account. Commitment and particularly affective commitment to a brand or a brand community, regarded as a more emotional long lasting relationship (Johnson et al., 2006), may have a direct effect on brand loyalty (Johnson et al., 2006; Loureiro et al., 2012). Loureiro et al. (2012) also proposed a direct relationship between brand trust and loyalty intentions, but in the context of the automotive industry, it seems that the strength of the direct relationship is not statistically significant, whereas the indirect effect through commitment is statistically significant. In this vein, we propose that the direct and indirect effects of brand trust on brand loyalty may depend on context. When approaching the brand as a dialogue platform among community members and other stakeholders, the role of the employees as “access points” into the brand is highlighted. The employees with their behaviours “humanize” the brand and motivate customers to emotionally connect to it (Morhart et al., 2009; Aggarwal and McGill, 2012) in a manner that determines the quality of the brand experience (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005; Henkel et al., 2007) and the level both of engagement and organizational self-disclosure (Hatch and Schultz, 2010). Hatch and Schultz (2010) explicitly proposed that management practices related to the employee behaviour need to enter the model of brand co-creation, a proposition that echoes the suggestions of other researchers (Balmer and Greyser, 2006; Balmer, 2011; Burmann et al., 2009; Payne et al., 2009; Boyle, 2007; Kaufmann et al., 2012a) for the elevated role of the employees in the consumer– brand relationship. Additionally, Yi and Gong (2013) highlighted the significance of the employee in the co-creation process supported by Gambetti and Graffigna (2015) by presenting in detail how the misalignment of internal meaning making process to the “outside” of the company resulted in a failure, emphasizing the role of the brand representatives in this outcome. Hence, in the context of our proposed model, a number of new research questions are raised:

RQ1. Does the brand-consistent employee behaviour influence the relationship between the consumer and the brand, namely, the brand love relationship, as the values of the brand become more apparent and therefore easier to be identified with (Morhart et al., 2009; Aggarwal and McGill, 2012)? RQ2. Can behavioural branding, as an element of the brand experience (Brakus et al., 2009) or during the customer participation process (Yi and Gong, 2013), have a positive influence on co-creation? RQ3. Does brand-inconsistent employee behaviour de-motivate customers from co-creating, despite their brand love relationship – as presented by Gambetti and Graffigna (2015)? RQ4. Does customer involvement with the product/service category positively affect the strength of the relationship between behavioural branding and co-creation (Fetscherin et al., 2014; France et al., 2015)? Finally, we propose that the empathy of the employees and the quality of the relationship between employees and customers will have more influence in the case of services compared to products, because of the nature of the services relating, for example, to the inseparability of service and consumption (Figure 2). Based on above discussion, the following propositions are formulated:

522

P1.

Behavioural branding positively influences brand love and co-creation.

P2.

Behavioural branding positively influences co-creation.

P3.

Customer involvement with the product or the service category positively affects the strength of the relationship between behavioural branding and co-creation.

P4.

Customer involvement with the product or the service category positively affects the strength of the relationship between brand love and co-creation.




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Figure 2 Proposed model

P5.

Product category and product/service positively affect the strength of the relationship between brand love and brand loyalty.

P6.

Product category and product/service positively affect the strength of the relationship between trust and brand loyalty.

with new insights on the factors explaining co-creation and motivating consumers to participate. From a managerial point of view, brand managers are enabled to identify new customer segments that will be more prone to co-creation and approach them with new tactics that will motivate them to engage more with the community. For example, the brand can adopt “members-only” benefits and access to exclusive information for the members of the community or other initiatives that will trigger collaboration among the members of the community and enhance their identification with the group and the brand, such as events or team projects – both in an online or offline context – providing the participators with the intrinsic rewards and participatory benefits necessary to become active and engaged while allowing the managers to measure and monitor the results. From this vein, the role of social media in the marketing strategy is shifted, and brand managers can exploit them as community builders and co-creation platforms rather than another medium for broadcasting brand messages. At the same time, new marketing roles can be introduced, related to the interaction with the community, as a result of understanding the urgency for reciprocity. On the same token, the recruitment criteria, the training and the compensation of the first line personnel, can be revised to secure that consumers are presented with a high-standards brand experience and a pleasant, congenial, social environment that will augment the customer willingness to co-create. Finally, internal initiatives and motivation plans should be crafted to stimulate the active participation of the brand representatives to the brand communities as means to further strengthen the bond between the brand, the consumers and the group. More importantly, however, corporate leaders and brand managers will have a better understanding of their role in the consumer– brand relationship, adopt new, more collaborative and transformational leadership styles, initiate the internalization of the brand values into the employees’ identity and facilitate employees’ active participation in the process. Further empirical research is needed to test and, possibly, differentiate our model in diverse product categories (i.e. non-hedonic) to explore the role of product category in the

Our model and research questions will be validated – at an initial exploratory stage – through qualitative research to obtain in-depth knowledge and better understanding of the interrelated concepts and perceptions of customers and brand representatives – observing the phenomena from a critical realist epistemological stance. The emphasis on the emotions and rewards context would allow for a better theoretical advancement of the value co-creation theory by encouraging multidisciplinary research glances (Brodie and de Chernatony, 2009) and – at a later stage – will be validated through quantitative research to be able to generalize and triangulate our findings.

Further research, discussion and limitations The primal limitation of our research at the current stage is that it needs to be validated through research, which will be undertaken in Cyprus and will be focused on the cosmetics industry that has been characterized as “hedonic” (Schifferstein and Hekkert, 2011, p. 111) and, therefore, more loveable (Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006). However, even on this conceptual level, this article contributes to knowledge by synthesizing three emerging concepts in the branding literature that have not been studied in a systematic manner so far. Particularly, the role of behavioural branding, both regarding the nurturing of the consumer– brand relationship to the level of brand love and in the value co-creation process, has been neglected so far in the literature, despite its significance. This article closes this gap by proposing a multifaceted role of the ways employees behave, as an avenue for a new stream of research. Additionally, the proposition that co-creation is an outcome of brand love provides both academics and marketing strategies and tactics of practitioners 523





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co-creation process and also in the service and diverse cultural contexts. New research in online contexts, where brand co-creators will not be geographically bounded, is regarded of paramount importance because of the two-way communication which facilitates co-creation and assumed differentiated brand love and brand loyalty factors. Because of the integration of micro sociological concepts (i.e. identity), the extent to which consumers expect or require the brand to reciprocate, is also a field that currently lacks consistent and conclusive evidence. Additionally, it has been recently proposed by Vernuccio et al. (2015), that social interactive engagement is an antecedent of brand love, mediated by social identity. Although not identical to co-creation, social interactive engagement is described as a very proximate concept, referring to the participation of consumers to brand related conversations, sharing of content, etc. Therefore, we propose that further research might be needed to clarify the directionality of the relationship between brand love and co-creation. Although co-creation as a term is positively charged, in general terms, the literature adopts an optimistic approach on how consumers participate, share and collaborate with other consumers and the brand (Plé and Cáceres, 2010), but as brands are losing control over the brand communities (Hatch and Schultz, 2010; Wirtz et al., 2013), there is always the threat of an avalanche of negative reputation and unpleasant brand experience sharing (Cherif and Miled, 2013). We suggest that further research is needed in the field of negative co-creation to deepen the understanding of reverse dynamics and the role of employees in this version of the phenomenon that will allow both academics and practitioners to create new frameworks to grow and protect the brands.

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Further reading Habibi, M.R., Laroche, M. and Richard, M. (2014), “The roles of brand community and community engagement in building brand trust on social media”, Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 37, pp. 152-161. Hatch, M.J. and Schultz, M. (2002), “The dynamics of organizational identity”, Human Relations, Vol. 55 No. 8, pp. 989-1018. Vargo, S.L., Maglio, P.P. and Akaka, M.A. (2008), “On value and value co-creation: a service systems and service logic perspective”, European Management Journal, Vol. 26 No. 3, pp. 145-152.

Corresponding author Agapi Manarioti can be contacted at: agapi@thebrandlove. com

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