Love is all you need - Defining the concept of love brands

Sammanfattning: Purpose: The term “love brand” has recently become a buzzword among marketing practitioners. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to define this concept, its elements, and how customers express the love they feel towards their love brand(s) in order to create a shared understanding among practitioners and the academic world. Methodology: First, a literature review is used to identify related theoretical concepts. Second, six semi-structured interviews were conducted by the authors to investigate brand-customer relationships and to identify common denominators of love brands. Findings: The concept of love brands is closely linked to the existing theory on brand love which serves as a solid basis of this paper. While brand love is found to describe the feelings customers have towards a brand, love brand refers to where the brand love is directed to. The main contribution of this paper is the development of a definition of love brands and the proposal of a conceptual framework illustrating the new concept. The authors define “love brand” as a concept subjective to the individual customer who feels a deep, passionate, and emotional connection towards the brand which aligns with his/her own personality and integrates the brand into his/her own identity. Research implications: Providing a first definition of the concept of love brands and a conceptual framework comprised of elements of love brands and the expression of that love enriches the theoretical landscape and opens up areas for future research on this topic. Additionally, managers and practitioners can gain a deeper understanding and a more holistic view on a term they are already using without any theoretical foundation. This will enable them to further foster the relationships between their brand and their customers. Limitations: Due to the paper’s limited scope and the small number of surveyed interviewees, the findings might not be generalisable. This paper takes a first look at the concept of love brands. Further research based on broader qualitative as well as quantitative studies is needed to validate and expand the findings of this research paper. Originality/value: Owing to the recent upcoming of the term “love brand” in marketing practice, there is a lack of literature on this phenomenon. Therefore, this paper aims at taking a first step to fill the existing gap between practice and the academic world. Keywords: brand love, brand-customer relationship, brand loyalty, love brands Paper type: Research paper