Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research

Citation: Susan Fournier (1998) Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research. Journal of Consumer Research (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research
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Tagged: Consumer Behavior (RSS), Brand Loyalty (RSS), Brand Personality (RSS)

Summary

This paper builds on the fact that the relational perspective in the consumer products domain has been vastly under researched in the marketing literature today. The author argues for the validity of the relationship proposition in the consumer brand context, and argues the legitimacy of the brand as an active relationship partner with a consumer. The author then provides a framework for understanding consumer-brand relationships and introduces the concept of brand relationship quality (BRQ), a diagnostic tool for conceptualizing and evaluating BRQ strength.

The author begins the paper by sitting a conceptual foundation for the topic. She asserts that brands can and do serve as legitimate relationship partners, consumer brand relationships are valid at the lived experience level, and that consumer brand relationships can be specified in many ways. She backs up these assertions by noting that consumers show no difficulty in assigning personality qualities to inanimate brand objects and providing the example of the complete anthropomorphization of brand objects themselves in consumers, i.e. Charlie the Tuna and the Pillsbury Doughboy. She states that all marketing actions are a set of behaviors from which trait inferences about a brand are made and through which a brand’s personality is developed and actualized. Basically, a brand is a collection of perceptions held in the mind of the consumer.

The author also develops the meaning of a relationship via three sources – the psychological, the sociocultural, and the relational. Relationships both affect and are affected by the contexts in which they are embedded and can help resolve life themes, deliver on important life projects or tasks, and/or add significant meanings to the lives of the people who engage in them. Relationship contexts include age, life cycle, gender, family and social network, and culture.

The study in this paper consisted of modified life history case studies conducted for three women in different life situations. The women were interviewed for 12 – 15 hours each in a series of 4 – 5 interviews conducted over a three-month period. The analysis of these case studies illustrate how different identities can lead to three very different patterns of consumer brand relationships. Each case study is summarized below:

Jean – Jean is a 59-year old woman who tends a small bar in a blue-collar town. She views herself as an excellent homemaker, mother and wife, who needs the best food and cleaning products in order to maintain that excellence. Her brand relationship portfolio is comprised of strong committed partnerships with over 40 packaged food and cleaning brands (Hunt’s sauce, Windex, Bounty, etc.). Her style of constructing her carefully chosen brand portfolio is mirrored in her life as well; if you are Jean’s friend and you are dedicated, Jean will reward you with the utmost loyalty.

Karen – Karen is a recently divorced 39-year old single mother raising her two daughters while working full time as an office manager. Karen’s brand relationships reveal very low levels of brand commitment (usually purchases the cheapest product displayed) and only a limited number of dedicated brand partnerships. However, these brand partnerships (Reebok, Mary Kay, Gatorade, etc.) serve to make her feel good about herself and provide an expression of personal values and therefore she values them highly. Her avoidance of specific products are also meaningful; for her, drinking Diet Coke would mean asserting that weight loss is needed and using Dial would re-establish her ex-husbands preferences. Therefore, she avoids both products to give her a sense of identity and independence.

Vicki – Vicki is a 23-year old graduate student in her final year of school. Her brand relationships are highly functional in enabling identity exploration, construction, and pronouncement. She is strongly motivated by the powers of brand image and readily adapts her identity to fit powerful institutionalized brand meanings. Vicki seeks to express not just one self, but multiple potential and realized selves. She shows no qualms in moving from brand to brand and therefore denies herself exclusivity and longevity in her brand loyalty expressions.

Upon analysis of these cases, the author concludes that brand relationships are valid at the level of the consumers’ lived experiences. The consumers are not just buying brands because they like them or because they work well; they are involved in relationships with these brands so as to benefit from the meanings they add into each of their lives.

The author then puts forth a property space of seven consumer brand relationship types based on a text-based analysis of the data from the cases studies: voluntary versus imposed, positive versus negative, intense versus superficial, enduring versus short term, public versus private, formal versus informal, and symmetric versus asymmetric. Using these brand relationship types, the author also puts forth a typology of fifteen consumer brand relationship forms including “best friends”, “marriage of convenience”, and “dependency”.

The author then conceptualizes consumer brand relationship strength using BRQ. BRQ highlights that there is more to keeping the brand relationship alive than merely positive feelings. Affective and socioemotive attachments, behavioral ties, and supportive cognitive believes combine to bring strength and durability to be BRQ over time. Simply put, consumers do not choose brands, they choose lives, and brands help them live the lives they want.

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

Managers should think of brand personality as a set of trait inferences constructed by the consumer based on repeated observations enacted by the brand by the manager him or herself. Summarizing brand personalities in terms of relationship role perceptions and plotting those into a relationship space can build a framework for brand image management that can prove insightful and relevant through strategic application.