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You’re so lovable: Anthropomorphism and brand love

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Abstract

Brand love has been found to predict brand loyalty measures better than conventional attitude models that rely on the brand’s perceived quality. Hence, marketers are interested in factors that lead to brand love. This study investigates the influence of anthropomorphism on brand love in the context of defensive marketing. We identified five possible theoretical mechanisms through which anthropomorphism may influence brand love: category-level evaluation, cognitive fluency, cognitive consistency, self-extension and self-congruence. The results reveal that the level of quality and anthropomorphism that a consumer perceives the brand has are important antecedents of brand love. Moreover, anthropomorphism’s predictive power differs between evaluative and relationship-specific dimensions of brand love.

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Notes

  1. In previous studies this has been called “attitude strength 1”.

  2. In previous studies this has been called “attitude strength 2”.

  3. One reviewer suggested that the relationship could also be moderated (rather than mediated) by self-congruence. We tested this assumption using the interaction-probing procedure as recommended by Aiken and West (1991). No significant interaction effect could be identified.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the help of Charlotte Baumann and Natalia Broza in collecting data for this study. The authors furthermore thank the two guest editors and the anonymous reviewers from the Journal of Brand Management for their insightful and constructive comments and feedback.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, Otto-Friedrich-University of Bamberg, Feldkirchenstr. 21, Bamberg, 96052, Germany

    Philipp A Rauschnabel & Aaron C Ahuvia

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  1. Philipp A Rauschnabel
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  2. Aaron C Ahuvia
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Correspondence to Philipp A Rauschnabel.

Appendices

Appendix A

Table A1

Table A1 Demographics
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Appendix B

Table B1

Table B1 Measurement model
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Rauschnabel, P., Ahuvia, A. You’re so lovable: Anthropomorphism and brand love. J Brand Manag 21, 372–395 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2014.14

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