“All You Need is Love.”
Emotional Brand Attachment: When product design
represents more than the sum of its parts to consumers.
“Innovative Design and Brand Love: What’s Self-Congruity Got to Do with
It?”
by
DILARA F. TUNA Hereweg 1a, 9726 AA Groningen
+(31)647608957 D.F.Tuna@gmail.com Student Number: 2359111
University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business
MSc Marketing Management & MSc BA Strategic Innovation Management 24 Augustus, 2015
PREFACE
“It is the set of the sails not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.” (Jim Rohn)
Finally, after 7 years of studying this is it. The end of an era. The end of my student life. Everything started back in 2008 in the small town of Emmen, where I first decided to attempt the University of Applied Science and after 2 years of studying, making friends for a lifetime and starting to find my passion for travelling, my first journey ended and a new one was about to start at the Hanze University of Applied Science in Groningen. Half a year of Sales Management where I finally started to learn the do’s and don’ts about selling products and finally yourself, I decided to follow my dreams and start an internship at the Hampstead School of English in beautiful London. The city of my dreams. But as I finally got used to moving, making new friends and not having a proper room for myself, my passion took me up north into the Scandinavian beauty Oslo. I went from living in a city with more than 5 million inhabitants to a country with less than 4 million. What a blast. The sheer beauty and kindness of this country will never leave my memories and especially my heart but as studies go on, my next stop was back to the Netherlands, the Harbour City Rotterdam where I got the amazing opportunity to take an internship at Dior and at the same time finish my bachelor thesis. This is probably where my over excessive urge to not let go of any opportunity started. Until now I don’t know how I was able to finish, but I did. So I was looking for another challenge and started the pre-master for Marketing in september in Groningen as I haven’t had enough of that amazing city in just half a year. I have never had a more stressful but awesome period in my entire life. But then the real job started when I decided to not just take one Master course but two. And if that wasn’t enough for the utterly impatient me, I decided to become a board member of the sailing association in Groningen. A new passion, new friends, more workload but especially more experience, self-discipline and fun. Again, I do not exactly know how I did it, no one probably will, but I managed. And that’s what I am utterly proud of myself and have never even considered being able to do. When my math teacher in high school told me I should better drop out and get a job or something as I was untalented and rather stupid, I thought to myself: hell no. And here I am, two master degrees richer, loads of experiences, a curriculum vitae to be proud of. Besides the fact that the year 2015 has physically not been my best year, academically it was.
MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
First of all this study examined the main relationship between perceived design innovativeness and brand love and found a significant influence. High perceived design innovativeness of products are more likely to create the feeling of brand love compared to low perceived design innovativeness products. Self-congruity, the fit between the image someone has about himself and the image they hold about a brand or product, was expected to have an important impact on this relationship. The relationship between perceived design innovativeness and self-congruity was impacted by the type of consumer, whether or not they perceived themselves as more or less innovative.
Secondly, if the product was perceived as more innovative and the respondents find themselves having more innovative characteristics, the congruity between the product and one's self image increased. The most influential impact was between self-congruity and brand love. Self-congruity in all situations was found to be a strong predictor of higher brand love, so the more consumers find a fit between the product and themselves, the higher the possibility that they create a feeling of brand love with the particular product.
This relationship was expected to be influenced by product category, as we expected consumers to create a closer emotional bonding with hedonic compared to utilitarian products. This relation could not be found in this statistical analyses, so there was no difference between the brand love for hedonic compared to utilitarian products.
Lastly, it was expected that self-congruity, besides being an important antecedent of brand love, could play a mediating role between perceived design innovativeness and brand love. We assumed that for brand love to occur with a product, the effect from perceived design innovativeness needs to go through self-congruity. No significant evidence could be found for a mediating, indirect effect between the two variables, but we can conclude that indeed, self-congruity does play an important and remarkable role in creating brand love, especially when products are perceived as less or more innovative in design.
TABLE OF CONTENT
1. INTRODUCTION 8
1.1 Innovative Design 9
1.2 Emotional reactions to brands in the extreme – Brand Love 9 1.3 The fit between self-image and brand image – self-congruity 10
1.4 Different consumer characteristics 10
1.5 Product type influences 11
1.6 Problem statement and research questions 11
2. LITERATURE REVIEW 13
2.1 The Conceptual model: An Introduction 13
2.2 Consumers’ Emotional Response to innovative Design. Brand Love 14 2.3 The fit between the Brand Image and the self: Self-Congruity 15
2.4 Consumer Innovativeness and Design Acumen 16
2.5 Hedonic versus Utilitarian Products: Differences in Product Type 17
2.6 Conclusion 17
3. METHODOLOGY 19
3.1 Procedure 19
3.2 Subjects 19
3.3 Study Design and Stimuli 19
3.4 Operationalization 21 3.4.1 Reliability Analysis 21 3.5 Data Analysis 23 3.5.1 Correlations 23 3.5.2 Regression Analysis 24 4. RESULTS 27 4.1 Demographics 27 4.2 Manipulation Checks 27
4.2.1 Perceived Design Innovativeness 28
4.2.2 Product Type 28
4.3 Hypothesis Testing 29
4.3.1 Overview 29
4.3.2 Main effect of Perceived Design Innovativeness on Brand Love (H1) 30
4.3.4 Mediation of Self-Congruity (H3) 30
4.3.5 Main effect of Product Type on Brand Love (H5a) 32
4.3.6 Overall Model : H1, H2, H3. H4, H5a 32
4.3.7 Moderating effect of Product Type (H5b) 34
5. CONCLUSION 36
5.1 General Discussion 36
5.2 Limitations and Further Research 38
6. REFERENCES 40
7. APPENDICES 46
Appendix A – Questionnaire 53
Appendix B – Reliability Analysis 55
Appendix C – Independent Sample t-Test 54
Appendix D – One-Way ANOVA H1 57
Appendix E – Linear Regression H2 58
Appendix F – Mediation Analysis H3 59
Appendix G1 – Two-Way ANOVA H4 61
Appendix G2 – One-Way ANOVA H4 63
Appendix H1 – One-Way ANOVA H5a 64
Appendix H2 – One-Way ANOVA H5a 65
“For whatever reason, many refuse to accept that people might actually have relationships with brands. They say, ‘Relationship is just a metaphor.’…There is plenty of empirical evidence to the
contrary of course.”
1. INTRODUCTION
Declarations of love to brands like Apple are not unusual nowadays. As for example quotes likes this one on Twitter can be found: Grainger, Carl (cgrainger) “You just have to admire Apple. Superb design, quality, innovative and functional. They seduced me 4 months ago. I'm in love with a brand!” 30 july 2010, 1:10 pm. Especially when it comes to the brand Apple, society often talks about Apple-lovers as if the consumers were having a personal relationship with the products and the brand. Often those love declarations are given hand in hand with naming the innovativeness and design of the brand. Reebok designer John Zoccai (1991) stated in the Fortune Magazine interview on the discussion of increasing importance of product design that ''It's what makes you fall in love with a product.''
The internet is overloaded with articles about how consumers fall in love with brands, how they adore and admire them (Fournier, 1998; Batra et. al 2012; Thomson, MacInnis, and Park 2005) to assess the cause of this consumer-object relationship. Questions arise of when and how such love-relationships develop and why some people fall in love with special brands , and why other people mostly do not own such an emotional bond with its customers. Does this phenomenon appear because companies such as Apple, Nike, Google or Microsoft come with innovative and novel products to the market? Is it the desire for consumers to be able to purchase the latest trends and innovations possible from just one brand? Rogers (2004), CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, wrote in his book about the concept of Lovemarks, stating that creating a feeling of love for brands is the future that differentiates in the market place. On the website of the Saatchi & Saatchi is stated that consumers do find replacement for brands and products but not for lovemarks, as they“reach your heart as well as your mind, creating an intimate, emotional connection that you just can’t live without.“ (retrieved from http://saatchi.com/en-us/purpose/lovemarks/). It is widely known though that love as an emotion playing an influence in branding pays off. Due to the increasing importance of brand love, companies like Coca-Cola use brand love metrics to quantify this relationship between customers and their brand (Batra, 2012).
Rossiter (2012) states “Loving the brand, versus merely liking it, clearly pays off behaviorally — thereby demonstrating very good predictive validity for the new contrastive measure. Brand purchase or usage rate and brand recommendations were found to be approximately doubled for those who love the brand in comparison with those who merely like it.” Which again stresses the importance and upcoming interest in researchers for investigating the concept of brand love into more detail due to its importance in the consumer-brand relationship.
satisfaction and company profitability through the creative use of major design elements (performance, quality, durability, appearance, and cost) in connection with products, environments, information, and corporate identities’’ includes the aspect of desiring to increase consumer satisfaction, which can be fulfilled by major design elements. In times of co-creation and 3D printing, the consumer can more than ever influence the personal appealing aesthetic of a product and this makes it even more difficult and challenging for companies to make products more appealing to consumers’ personal needs. This calls for more attention to the marketing and product design field (Luchs and Swan, 2011) especially because design has been shown to be responsible for the success of brands as BMW, Apple and Dell (Brunner et al., 2008). So, this thesis will encompass the importance of a compliance between product design and marketing.
1.1 Innovative Design
Nowadays, consumers perceive the innovativeness of firms mostly through product designs as that is the information which is easily and readily accessible to them (Kaplan, 2009). In the face of increasing competition worldwide, product design has established itself as an integrated practice which is fundamental to firm strategy and a strategic tool which might lead to increased success rate of a firm in the marketplace (Luchs and Swan, 2011). Besides increasing recognition of the importance of product design in the marketplace, the concept has not seen significant attention in empirical research in the marketing and innovation field. The consumer response to product design has been scarcely studied, even though strong emotional reactions from consumers as response to perceived innovativeness of the product design have been found (Kaplan, 2009). Yet, it is widely known that emotions play a critical role in consumer decision making (Bechara, 2004; Loewenstein & Lerner 2003) and brand preference (Thomson, MacInnis & Park, 2003). Given that product design can also evoke emotions in consumers, this study tries to establish the role of product design in influencing the emotional attachment to brands and products.
1.2 Emotional reactions to brands in the extreme - Brand Love
Consumers have been known to develop a deep bond with brands. Besides merely liking products and brands, researchers talk about the phenomenon of brand love, which goes one step further and describes the “degree of passionate emotional attachment a satisfied consumer has for a particular trade name” (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006) and has been developed from the psychological field of interpersonal love (Shimp & Madden, 1988). Showing the relationship between consumers as human beings and brands or products in an emotional and psychological way, where brands are giving personality traits which consumers as human beings associate with them, is not a recent phenomenon. Aaker (1997) already established the brand personality dimensions applied to brands and these dimensions have been intensively used in several studies (Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001; McAlexander et al., 2001; Yoo and Donthu, 2001).
interesting field of opportunity for researchers. For instance Carroll & Ahuvia (2006) use brand love as a desirable brand outcome as they state that the mere liking of brands shifts toward the new dimension of brand love, and found that brand love is an antecedent to brand loyalty, mediating the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty. They define the brand love as “the degree of passionate emotional attachment a satisfied consumer has for a particular trade name” which “includes passion for the brand, attachment to the brand, positive evaluation of the brand, positive emotions in response to the brand, and declarations of love for the brand” (Ahuvia, 2005b). This brings consumer satisfaction to a further level and increases a desirable post-consumption behavior and is experienced by some, but not all, satisfied consumers (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006). This emotional bonding between consumers and objects such as brands is comparable with the concept of interpersonal attachment and is derived from the interpersonal love concept in psychological literature (Shimp and Madden, 1988, Thomson et al, 2005, Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006). It can either be developed based on experience with the brand or controlled or uncontrolled communication about the brand in the form of firm sponsored and intended advertising or word-of-mouth (Berry, 2000). So the extreme emotional reaction of consumers to brand in terms of brand love will investigated in this research to get a deeper understanding of how consumers react to different brands differently.
1.3.1 The fit between self-image and brand image - self-congruity
In reference to the phenomenon of emotional attachment to brands, the concept of self-congruity has been investigated in previous research. The impact of innovative new product design is likely to vary across customers, which might be explained by the tendency of customers to consume products with an image consistent to their own self-image (Sirgy, 1985). Recent research has shown that individual personality traits of consumers play a significant role in the development of brand love (Roy et al, 2012). Similarly, Aaker (1997) and Fournier (1998) have shown that when brand personalities are congruent with the self-concept of the consumer, brand love increases. Therefore, the concept of self-congruity is introduced as it indicates a fit between the self-image of the consumer and the image of the brand or product itself (Sirgy, 1985). The concept of brand personality has been widely investigated in combination with the self-congruity concept, as brands might act as a means for consumers to express different aspects of their inner self through the brand (Aaker, 1997; Belk, 1988; Escalas and Bettman, 2005; Johar, Sengupta and Aaker, 2005) . Two of the measures of the brand personality scale of Aaker (1997) have been used in combination with the research on self-congruity and brand personalities: sincere and exciting. Hence, before consumers feel a degree of love for a brand, there needs to be a certain fit between their own image and the brand image they experience. 1.4. 3 Different Consumer Characteristics
seeking more innovation and novelty in their products might be different than consumers with lower level of novelty-seeking characteristics. The reason behind this is that the competence of consumers to adapt or positively react to innovations lies in their psychological traits (Midgley and Dowling, 1978; Lin, 2010) and individuals with more innovative and design acumen character traits are expected react more favorably to design innovations. Consequently, it is important to include different consumer characteristics into this research to refine the possibilities of influences attitudes of consumers to brands.
1.4.4 Product type influences
Different types of products may influence consumer responses differently. In their study about emotional brand attachment Mälar et al (2011) stated in their limitations that it might be important for future research to include different product categories as hedonic versus utilitarian products such as emotional reaction in the search for antecedents of brand love. Consumers differentiate between hedonic and utilitarian values of products and brands, and it has been shown that hedonic values are more influential in driving positive brand related outcomes than utilitarian values are (Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006; Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001). The hedonic value of products and brands is defined as driving emotional brand attachments, and in this research a difference will be made between a hedonic and a non-hedonic product to test the different impact on emotional brand feelings of the consumer. In such manner, this research will connect to the advice of further research of foregone articles and include hedonic and non-hedonic product manipulations.
1.5 Problem statement and research questions
In summary, this research will help to fill the literature gap between product design innovativeness and brand attachment by investigating the influence of the perceived design innovativeness through self-congruity on brand love. The problem statement is as follows:
How does perceived innovativeness of product design of a hedonic versus non-hedonic product, through self-congruity, lead to emotional brand attachment (brand love) given the innovative nature of the consumer?
The related research questions are:
1. How does perceived design innovativeness influence consumers self-congruity?
2. How do consumer characteristics influence self-congruity and the relationship between perceived design innovativeness and self-congruity?
3. How does self-congruity influence brand love?
The objective of this research is to increase our understanding of how perceived product design innovativeness and brand love are related through self-congruity. The differing influence of hedonic and non-hedonic product categories in this relationship are included in the study, as well as how consumer characteristics might have an influence: whether being more of an adopter or innovator has a different effect. This research field may be interesting and important for as well academic as managerial relevance. For marketing managers to gain a better understanding of which factors drive the emotional attachment of consumers to their brand and how different groups of consumers react differently to innovative product design. Academically, to fill the gap between product design and innovation literature and marketing in the field of consumer behavior and understanding. The main purpose of this study is to find out whether the variable perceived design innovativeness does have a significant impact and how it impacts brand love. The focus will be on brands in general, not a specific brand.
1. LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter will be introducing the conceptual model as a visualization for the connection of the variables and hypotheses. Following, based on literature review from academic articles hypothesis will be set up and reasoned.
2.1 The Conceptual model: An Introduction
According to Bloch (1995), the physical form of a product, it’s design, might determine its market success and therefore needs to be included in strategic decision making. Other researchers also recognize the importance of product design as the appearance of a product can be used to gain consumer recognition in densely covered product markets (Berkowitz, 1987; Dumaine, 1991). A distinct design helps consumers find their way through the jungle of products they are exposed to and aids companies in differentiating themselves in the marketplace. Product design also communicates the corporate brand identity and thus helps to create a brand image in the consumer's mind (Forty, 1986). Additionally to the definition of Carroll and Ahuvia (2006) given in the introduction, consumers’ love for brands includes five characteristics: passion for a brand, brand attachment, positive evaluation of the brand, positive emotions in response to the brand, and declarations of love towards it. For these emotional feelings to occur, a close, personal relationship and bonding between the consumer and the brand needs to be established. The level of connection between the brand and the consumer is of importance. For this deeper emotional bond to develop, antecedent conditions need to hold. Research has shown that consumers are more likely to develop a strong emotional connection with products and brands if those help them to express their own self-image (Sirgy et al., 1997; Sirgy and Su, 2000) so there needs to be a fit between the image of the product and the image consumers want to hold of themselves. For that reason the self-congruity concept is included as antecedent of brand love and is even predicted to mediate the relationship between perceived design innovativeness and brand love.
expected to directly affect self-congruity and moderate the self-congruity and perceived design innovativeness relationship. More clarification about the different variables and their expected relationships and influences follow in the subsequent sections.
Figure 1: Conceptual Model: Summary
2.2 Consumers' Emotional Responses to Innovative Design: Brand Love
designs that are in line with what is saved in their memories and associations about certain products and product groups, too much unity might be experienced as boring, whether new and innovative design which is untypical and unknown to the consumer creates a form of arousal. Radford and Bloch (2011) and Larsen and Diner (1992) discover that if products innovative on design create more positive consumer reactions and emotions. New and innovative design makes the consumer excited and more willing to engage with the product and create a deeper emotional bonding. This emotional bonding above the mere liking and satisfaction with a product can be compared to the concept of brand love. . Therefore, the first hypothesis is:
Hypothesis 1: Products with higher Perceived Design Innovativeness receive higher
Brand Love.
2.3 The fit between the Brand Image and the self : Self-Congruity
Self-congruity in the marketing literature is defined as “a fit between the consumers self and the brand’s personality or image”, thus a fit with their self-concept (Aaker, 1999; Sirgy, 1982). In the branding literature, the concept of brand image has been intensively studied in combination with the self-concept interface in the past decades : Aaker & Shansby (1982) studied the role which a brand plays in expressing one’s own identity with a brand. Consumers tend to like products which have an image consistent with their own self-image, which is called the self-congruity (Sirgy, 1985) and is related to the likeliness that people compare themselves to objects and stimuli. This can be divided into actual and ideal-self (Liu et al, 2011; Ekinci & Riley, 2003). In the paper of Roy et al. (2013) they found that self-congruity is positively related to brand love, as it gives consumers the opportunity to compare their own identity with the purchase of a certain product. Whereas actual-self, who they think they currently are, and the ideal-self, the person they aspire to be. Based on the fact that consumers aim to express themselves with products and brands that reinforce their own image, the self-congruity might drive emotional consumer behavior, whereas brand love as it also has a positive effect on product preference, attitude and evaluation (Helgeson & Supphellen, 2004; Mugge & Govers, 2004). It has been shown that when a brand scores higher on actual self-congruity, consumers created a closer emotional bond with it, so it has a positive effect on emotional brand attachment (Malä et al., 2011). The research on self-congruity and it’s influence on attitude towards brands have shown that consumers mentally compare themselves and their characteristics to brands and based on their match or mismatch (fit) between their own self-image and the brand image (Dolich, 1969; Gould, 1991; Graeff, 1996; Sirgy, 1982, 1986; Sutherland et al., 2004).
products which meet the customers personal and emotional needs, in order to create a fit between their self-image and the brand image, the following hypothesis is developed:
Hypothesis 2: Products with high Self-Congruity receive higher Brand Love.
Product design needs to be more integrated into the marketing and especially the marketing psychology concept as symbolic brand expressions are often used by consumers for their personal self-expression and social integration (Belk, 1988; McCracken, 1986; Zinkham and Hong, 1991).
The newness and innovativeness of product design not only positively affects brand related outcomes but satisfies expression (Yalch and Brunel, 1996) so a mediating effect of self-congruence between the relationship of product design innovativeness and brand love as outcome variable is expected. Innovativeness of design might therefore facilitate the adaption process of new products when consumers feel a congruence between themselves and the design (Schoormans and Robben, 1997). Thus, Hypothesis 3 states that:
Hypothesis 3: Self-congruity fully mediates the relationship between perceived design
innovativeness and brand love.
2.4 Consumer Innovativeness and Design Acumen
The theory of Sirgy (1985) and Cowart et al. (2008) also propose that innovativeness of the consumer has a positive effect self-congruity in the context of novel perceived products as this matches their own perceived image.
Therefore, we develop the following assumption:
Hypothesis 4: High perceived design innovativeness does have a positive (negative)
effect on self-congruity for people scoring high (low) on consumer innovativeness and design acumen.
2.5 Hedonic versus Utilitarian Products: Differences in Product Type
Several studies (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006; Malä et al., 2011; Thomas, MacInnis & Park, 2005 and Crilly et al. 2004) wrote in their study limitations and further research sections that future research could include the difference in nature of the products, hedonic versus utilitarian, into the study conditions. Govers & Mugge (2004) argue that it would be interesting for future research to investigate whether a stronger product-personality congruence exists with hedonic compared to utilitarian products. Carroll and Ahuvia (2006) define hedonic value as “the consumer’s perception of the relative role of hedonic (as compared to utilitarian) benefits offered by the brand” and “deliver pleasure, fun or excitement as one of the primary benefits.” For utilitarian products such as toasters (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006) technical aspects play more of an important role than symbolic benefits. Hedonic products have more of a fun and pleasure value to customers and generate greater emotional response (Wansink and Laurent, 2000; Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982, Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001) and therefore we expect that consumers will find them more loveable and become more easily attached to these kind of products (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006). Based on this previous research the product category difference is included in this study design and it is hypothesized that hedonic products have higher influence on the emotional response to the product, brand love, compared to utilitarian products:
Hypothesis 5a: A hedonic product displays higher brand love than a utilitarian product. Hypothesis 5b: The positive effect of self-congruity on brand love is stronger for more
hedonic perceived products. 2.6 Conclusion
3. METHODOLOGY
In this chapter the empirical research will be explained, i.e. using an experimental design to be able to expose respondents to different stimuli. This chapter will give insight into which data for was collected and the way data was collected. Further, the way of measuring the collected data will be specified.
3.1Procedure
Data has been collected using an online questionnaire (Appendix A) which has been spread through the internet. After a short introduction about the purpose of the questionnaire, respondents were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: they were presented with a picture of a hedonic (mobile phone) or utilitarian (cooking pan) product either high or low in the perceived design innovativeness. The picture, a short introduction tells the respondent that they should keep the picture in mind throughout the questionnaire and stating that the product is part of the portfolio of a fictional brand name “Antigua” (created by Porter and Claycomb (1997) in his study how brand names influence consumers). After viewing the picture, the subjects answered questions about the product and themselves and their relationship to the product. At the end of the questionnaire, one question was included to check whether respondents were familiar with the fictive brand name “Antigua”. To control whether the manipulation of the design innovativeness and product type was successful, two manipulation check variables were included in the questionnaire. Finally, questions about demographics were asked and the respondent was thanked for completing the questionnaire. It took the respondents approximately three minutes to complete the questionnaire.
3.2Subjects
Data was collected online by distributing the link of the questionnaire via social media and email. The method using to collect the data was the “snowball chain” (Malhotra, 2006). There were 159 valid respondents (62 males, 97 females). 70 respondents were excluded due to dropping out of the survey. Due to the fact that this dropout happened in one specific timespan it is expected that there was an error with the server or link. The sampling duration was from May 2nd , 2015 to May 18th, 2015.
3.3 Study Design and Stimuli
The stimuli in this study were four different types of products as can be seen in table 3.1. In one condition a hedonic product high on perceived design innovativeness, the same hedonic product low on perceived design innovativeness and the utilitarian product high or low on perceived design innovativeness will be randomly spread through the respondents. The different stimuli were represented similarly between the respondents with a white background, the same size and removing the brands from the products. Additionally we added a fictive brand name “Antigua” and thus limited the effect of brand names or preference of the picture on layout aspects.
3.4 Operationalization
In this chapter, the origin of the scales of the variables used will be briefly discussed. An overview of the scales used for this study and the study they originate from is illustrated in table 3.3. As multi-item scales have been used to test the constructs, we use reliability analysis to have a look if the underlying constructs can be combined into one variable for further analysis, the alpha values can be found in table 3.3 as well.
TABLE 3.3: Overview Tests Variable Variable
Term
Type Scale # Cronbach’s
Alpha
Reference
Brand Love BL Dependent 7-Point
Likert Scale 10 .785 Carroll & Ahuvia (2006) Ideal Self- Congruity SC Mediator 7-Point Likert Scale 6 .883 Sirgy et al. (1997) Actual Self- Congruity SC Mediator 7-Point Likert Scale 6 .833 Sirgy et al. (1997)
Product Type PT Moderator 2 6 .812 Carroll &
Ahuvia (2006) Perceived Design innovativeness PDI Manipulation Check 7-Point Likert Scale
4 .867 Kim & Self
(2013) Consumer Innovativeness CT Moderator 1 7-Point Likert Scale 5 .842 Truong et al. (2014) Design Acumen CT Moderator 1 7-Point Likert Scale 5 .861 Bloch et al. (2003)
Demographics Demo Other Drop
Down
4
Self-constructed
Check Check Other Yes / No 1
Self-constructed
3.4.1 Reliability Analysis
Dependent Variable - Brand Love
The dependent variable in this research, brand love, will be tested by using the brand love construct of ten items measured with five-point Likert-type scales based on the research of Carroll & Ahuvia (2006). The level of brand love based on the article provides empirical support for the fact that brand love is a useful construct in marketing to show the difference between consumers’ emotional response to a brand and the mere satisfaction of consumers. The scale consists of 10 items where question 4 and 7 are reverse-coded items. After conducting the reliability analysis, The 10-item scale has sufficient reliability (α= .785).
Mediating Variable - Self-Congruity
To measure the impact of self-congruity on the relationship of perceived design innovativeness and brand love, the method of Sirgy et al. (1997) was used: respondents answer the extent of their agreement on every item of a 7-Point Likert scale about actual self-congruity and ideal self-congruity. This scale has been used as it gives valuable insights into the measurement of the construct.. Therefore, this study uses the measurement scale of Sirgy et al. (1997) for the self-congruity construct. It consists of 6 items, three on ideal self and actual self respectively where item 2 and 6 are reverse coded.
The two-reversed items on both scales had low loadings and were dropped, such that the 4-item scale has a Cronbach's alpha of .833 for actual self-congruity and .883 for ideal self-congruity. Moderating Variable 1 - Consumer Innovativeness and Design Acumen
Consistent with previous research on how innovative design is differently perceived by different consumers, we use the scales for consumer innovativeness and design acumen from the study of Truong et al. (2013). In their research they investigated that people with different design and innovation perceptions evaluate and define innovation and design differently. We use the measures of consumer innovativeness and design acumen to include psychological traits of consumers into the design - brand love relationship. Truong et al. (2013) used the three measures of Goldsmith and Hofacker (1991) and Goldsmith, d’Hauteville, and Flynn (1998) for the consumer innovativeness concept and borrowed the two-item measure of Bloch et al. (2003) for design acumen. Both scales are measured on 7-Point Likert scales ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree. The Cronbach’s alpha of as well consumer innovativeness (α= .842) and design acumen (α= .861) were significantly above the critical value of ,6 and all items in the variables used for analysis.
Manipulation Check - Perceived Design Innovativeness and Hedonic Product
(hedonic versus utilitarian and high versus low perceived design innovativeness) by using independent sample t-tests. The questions on this scale were answered on 7-point Likert scales ranging from 1= strongly disagree to 7= strongly agree. To assess whether a product was experienced as more hedonic than utilitarian, the 6-item semantic differential scale ( For example: Is functional – Is pleasurable; Is Useful – Is Fun) ranging from 1 to 5 of the study of Carroll & Ahuvia (2006) on brand love antecedents was borrowed. The fact that they used this measure in the context of brand love antecedents gives it a fit with the purpose of the current study. The second and fourth item are reverse coded. Perceived design innovativeness showed a significant Cronbach’s alpha of ,867 as well as the measure of hedonic product value which had a Cronbach’s alpha of .812.
3.5 Data Analysis
The analyses of the data gathered from the questionnaire will be done by using multiple tests in the Statistical Software package for Social Sciences (SPSS). An overview of the sort of test per hypothesis is displayed in table 3.5. The confidence level used in the statistical analyses of this study is 95% , so if the p-value is lower than the confidence level 0,05 we can accept the hypothesis (Malhotra, 2006). The results of the analyses will be discussed in the next chapter.
3.5.1 Correlations
Some variables have been measured with multiple items as for example Brand Love has been measured using ten different items which then can be put together under one underlying construct. As the items are measuring the same construct and occur together, it is necessary to preclude that the variables cause each other, a phenomenon called multicollinearity. In that case we could not differentiate the effects of the different items on another as they are highly correlated with each other. (Blumberg et al, 2011). Therefor, the Pearson's correlation was examined to detect possible correlations between variables which might bias the analyses. In case of a positive correlation, when the variable increases, the other increases as well and if it decreases, the other decreases as well. Negative correlation means if one decreases, the other increases and vice versa, so a move in the opposite direction. The closer the Pearson correlation coefficient goes to 1, the stronger the relationship of both variables.
with the brand or product. The same accounts for consumer innovativeness and design acumen, which indicate a positive Pearson’s correlation coefficient of .530. As both variables are dimensions of the consumer characteristics, the results of brand love on these dimensions are presented separately. The significant correlation between brand love, degree of newness and brand love and actual self are rather small. The significance in this case might be due to the number of respondents and we do not focus on these relatively low coefficients.
TABLE 3.4: Correlations between independent and dependent variables Type of product Degree of newness Consumer Innovativeness Design acumen Ideal Self Actual Self Brand Love Type of product 1 Degree of newness -,082 1 Consumer Innovativeness -,044 ,088 1 Design acumen -,136 ,177 ,530* 1 Ideal Self -,088 ,038 ,158 ,125 1 Actual Self ,076 -,068 ,143 ,074 ,722* 1 Brand Love ,010 ,244* ,108 ,153 ,546* ,442* 1
*=significant at p=0.05
3.5.2 Regression AnalysesSeveral types of regression analyses were used to test the different hypotheses. In this paragraph, an overview of the different methods used per hypothesis is given.
Moderation Analysis
To examine hypothesis one (Higher (lower) Perceived Design Innovativeness has a positive (negative) effect on Brand Love) a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test has been used where brand love formed the dependent variable. The independent variable perceived design innovativeness was measured with 7-point Likert scales. To be able to conduct a one-way ANOVA analysis, it has been checked if the manipulation for this variable worked, using an independent sample t test. Based here on the independent variable was separated into two groups, group 1 high perceived design innovativeness and group 2 low perceived design innovativeness. Hypothesis 2(Higher (lower) self-congruity positively (negatively) influences emotional brand attachment in terms of brand love. ) was tested using a linear regression analysis with brand love as dependent variable and self-congruity as independent variables.
Mediation Analysis
Hypothesis 3 (Self-congruity mediates the relationship between perceived design
TABLE 3.5: Overview Tests
Hypothesis Independent Variable Dependent Variable Test H1 Perceived Design
Innovativeness (0=not innovative; 1=innovative)
Brand Love (7-Point Likert scale) One-way ANOVA
H2 Self-congruity (7-Point Likert scale)
Brand Love (7-Point Likert scale) Linear Regression H3 (Overall
Model)
Perceived Design Innovativeness (7-Point Likert scale)
Self-congruity (7-Point Likert scale) (Mediator)
Brand Love (7-Point Likert scale)
Bootstrap Test H4 Perceived Design Innovativeness (0=not innovative; 1=innovative) Consumer Innovativeness (median split)(0= innovative; 1= not innovative) (Moderator)
Self-congruity (7-Point Likert scale) Two-way ANOVA
H5a Product Type (0=utilitarian(pan); 1=hedonic(mobile phone))
(Moderator)
Brand Love (7-Point Likert scale) One-way ANOVA
H5b Self-congruity (7-Point Likert scale) (Covariate) Product Type (0=utilitarian(pan); 1=hedonic(mobile phone))
4. RESULTS
In this sections, the results of the analysis as shown in the previous chapter will be discussed. To get an overview, the chapter starts with some descriptive statistics of the demographics of the respondents. Hereafter, to check whether or not the manipulation of perceived design innovativeness of the products and the products types is shown. Finally, the results of the hypotheses testing by using the preceding analysis methods is are discussed in detail. The outputs of the analysis can be found in the appendices. In the course of the remaining chapters, ‘M’ refers to the mean and ‘SD’ to standard deviation.
4.1 Demographics
First of all, to get an overview of the respondents who answered the questionnaire, we will provide some demographics. Most of the respondents were between 15 and 24 years old (59.1%), 37.7% were 25 to 34 years old, 1.9% were 35 to 44 years old, 0.6% were 45 to 54 years of age and the remaining 0.6% were older than 55 years. Of the 159 valid respondents, 97 were female and 62 were male. 34 of the respondents were exposed to condition 1 (high innovative product design x hedonic product), 40 were exposed to condition 2 (low innovative product design x hedonic product), 46 to condition 3 (high innovative product design x utilitarian product) and the remaining 39 respondents saw condition 4 (low innovative product design x utilitarian product). Most of the respondents are Dutch (106), 33 respondents were German and 20 had other nationalities. Table 4.1 shows an overview over the descriptive statistics.
TABLE 4.1: Demographics High Innovative Product Design Low Innovative Product Design Hedonic Product Utilitarian Product Male 32 30 31 31 Female 48 49 43 54 N 80 79 74 85 4.2 Manipulation Checks
conditions, we used an independent sample t-test. As expected, the manipulation in all four conditions were as intended. In the following sections, the results per manipulation will be outlined in detail. The SPSS outputs of the independent sample t-test can be shown inappendix C1.
4.2.1 Perceived Design Innovativeness
As expected, the independent sample t-test shows that the results of the manipulation were as intended. Respondents in the condition ‘High Innovative Product Design’ rated the product as higher perceived product design innovativeness (M=4.47; SD=1.185) compared to the respondents exposed to the ‘Low Innovative Product Design’ condition (M= 3.32; SD=1.193). Variances are assumed to be equal as the Levene’s p-value is .314. The test was significant as the absolute t-value is 6.111 and the p-value ,000.The results of the test can be seen in table 4.2. We created two dummy variables, high (1) and low(0) perceived design innovativeness to be able to conduct a univariate ANOVA test. TABLE 4.2: High vs. Low Innovative Product Design
Product Type Perceived Product Design Innovativeness
M SD High Innovative Product Design 4,47 1,185 Low Innovative Product Design 3,32 1,193 4.2.2 Product Type
The manipulation of product type was as well successful. Subjects perceived the mobile phone as more hedonic (M=3.69; SD=1.037) and the pan as utilitarian (M=3.34; SD=1.184). This indicates that the manipulations are significantly different with an absolute t-value of 2.017 and a significant p-value of .045. In this case the variances were assumed to be equal due to the Levene’s p-p-value of .131. Table 4.3 shows the results of the test. The results show that the average respondent of the mobile phone condition significantly differs from the respondent in the pan condition.
TABLE 4.3: Hedonic vs. Utilitarian Product
Product Type Perceived Product Design Innovativeness
4.3 Hypotheses Testing
The six hypotheses first introduced in chapter 2, were tested using several statistical test using SPSS, as has been presented in the previous chapter 3.5 and the corresponding table 3.4 . In the appendix the SPSS outputs are given. In the following sections, the analyses of each hypothesis and the results will be discussed in detail. For the hypotheses to be accepted, the results need to be significant, otherwise they will be rejected.
At the beginning of this chapter, first indications about the relationships between the variables are analyzed. The model of Hayes (2013) will be used to analyze the hypotheses and especially the overall moderated-mediation model (hypothesis 3). The last paragraph will test hypothesis 5b using an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).
4.3.1 Overview
An overview about the values of the different independent variables and moderators can be found in table 4.4. Table 4.5 shows whether there is a significant difference between the conditions with respect to the experimental variables. These indications have been made by conducting a two-way ANOVA test including interactions. The SPSS outcomes can be found in appendix D.
TABLE: 4.4 Overview Conditions
Condition Variable Mean SD N
Condition 1
(Hedonic / High Perceived Design Innovativeness)
Brand Love 3.9147 .82283 34 Consumer Innovativeness 3.9510 1.68201 46 Self-Congruity 3.7647 1.41547 34 Condition 2
(Hedonic / Low Perceived Design Innovativeness)
Brand Love 3.4200 .87741 40 Consumer Innovativeness 3.9250 1.47435 40 Self-Congruity 3.5375 1.14571 39 Condition 3
(Utilitarian / High Perceived Design Innovativeness)
Brand Love 3.4026 .82158 39 Consumer Innovativeness 4.2391 1.18147 46 Self-Congruity 3.2283 1.26362 46 Condition 4
(Utilitarian / Low Perceived Design Innovativeness)
Brand Love 3.8196 1.03936 46
Consumer Innovativeness
3.8376 1.02846 39
TABLE 4.5: Overview Interaction Effect Conditions
Mean Square F Sig.
Self-Congruity 5.049 3.267 .073
Brand Love .059 .073 .788
Consumer Innovativeness
1.385 .764 .383
4.3.2 Main effect of Perceived Design Innovativeness on Brand Love (H1)
“Higher perceived design innovativeness has a more positive effect on brand love than low perceived
design innovativeness.”
To test the first hypothesis, a one-way ANOVA has been performed to check whether or not perceived design innovativeness significantly influences brand love as attitudinal outcome variable of the consumer. The results of the one-way ANOVA (appendix E) shows that the mean (M=3.41) of the low perceived design innovativeness is lower than the mean (M= 3.63) of the high perceived design innovativeness condition. The test was significant (F=9.904; p= .002). Hence, we can conclude that the brand love of low perceived design innovativeness products is significantly lower than the brand love people feel for high perceived design innovativeness products. An increase in perceived innovativeness should lead to a significant increase in brand love and hypothesis one can be supported.
4.3.3 Main effect of Self-Congruity on Brand Love (H2)
“Higher self-congruity has a more positive relationship with brand love than lower self-congruity.”
Considering the second hypothesis, it was expected that higher self-congruity, so a fit between the person's own image and the image of the product, would lead to an increase in brand love. The regression analysis (Appendix F)showed that respondents encountering higher fit between their own self and the product image indeed score significantly higher on brand love compared to people with low self-congruity (t= 6.175; p= .000). 4.3.4 Moderating effect of Consumer Innovativeness (H4)
“High perceived design innovativeness does have a positive (negative) effect on self-congruity for people scoring high (low) on consumer innovativeness and design acumen.”
two-way ANOVA, we compute the metric variable of consumer innovativeness into a categorical variable by the median split.
The between subjects effects test shows that there is no significant interaction effect present between consumer innovativeness and perceived design innovativeness (F= .132; p=.717). Therefore we can conclude that perceived design innovativeness on actual self congruity is not influenced by whether the consumer is innovative or not. Hence, hypothesis four is rejected. As there was no significant effect of perceived design innovativeness and consumer characteristics on actual self-congruity, we would like to find which variable actually might have an impact on self congruity. In order to test this, we conduct a univariate ANOVA (appendix G2) where actual self is again the dependent variable but in this case take perceived design innovativeness and type of product as independent variables into account. In the tests of between-subjects effects table we can see that again perceived design innovativeness does not significantly influence actual self. The same counts for type of product as single variable (F= .806; p=.371). When looking at the interaction effect of perceived design innovativeness and product type we see a significant effect (F=3.267; p= .073). Investigating the influence of product type on actual self in detail, we see that there is a difference between product types on actual self. The hedonic product ‘mobile’ scores an average mean M=3.65 whereas the utilitarian product ‘pan’ scores a mean of M=3.47. The difference especially gets clear when looking at the plot diagram (figure 2) where we clearly see that in between the mobile category there is almost no difference between innovative and not innovative design, but when looking at the graph for the utilitarian product, we see that in case of an innovative pan the respondents have less of a fit between the product and their actual self. This indicates a significant interaction effect between perceived design innovativeness and product type. So the effect of perceived design innovativeness on actual self is influenced by the type of product.
FIGURE 2: Interaction effect
Type of product in the condition
E sti m a ted Ma rg in a l M ea n s
4.3.5 Main effect of Product Type on Brand Love (H5a)
“Hedoic products display higher Brand Love than Utilitarian products.”
The one-way ANOVA (appendix H1) shows that there is no significant difference between difference between brand love for hedonic or non-hedonic products (F= .017; p= .897). As we would like to know which variables do influence brand love, we conduct a univariate ANOVA (appendix H2) with brand love as dependent and product type and perceived design innovativeness as independent variable. We can again see that the product type itself is not significant and the same counts for the interaction effect of product type and perceived design innovativeness (F= .073; p=.788). We can see that the utilitarian product “pan” has a mean score of M=3.63 on brand love and the hedonic product “mobile phone” a score mean M=3.64 so there is no significant difference between the total mean scores of both categories. When looking at the differences in the product categories, we can see differences in means of perceived innovativeness. In between the utilitarian category, innovative has a mean score of M=3.82 and not innovative a mean score of M=3.4, so there is a marginal difference. The same counts for the hedonic category where innovative scores a mean of M=3.9 and not innovative a mean score M=3.41. Having a look at the between-subjects effects, a significant value of p= .002 can be found for perceived design innovativeness on brand love.
4.3.6 Overall Model: H1, H2, H3, H4, H5a
“Self-congruity mediates the relationship between perceived design innovativeness and brand love.”
For assessing the overall model significance, the conceptual diagram (figure 3) from Hayes (2013) has been used where the conditional indirect effect of the independent variable X on the dependent variable Y goes through M. In this case, a moderated mediation takes place as the assumed mediation effect of self-congruity differs based on two moderating variables W and V.
Y= Brand Love
X= Perceived Design Innovativeness M= Actual Self
W= Consumer Innovativeness V= Product Category
After processing the mediation analysis, in the dataset the variables are reduced to eight characters, so in the resulting table (appendix I) variable labels might differ from the original.
Firstly, we have a look at the model summary regression where the predictor variable is actual self (table 4.6). There is no significant relationship between actual self and the predictor variables perceived design innovativeness (p= .3129). Consumer type is not a significant predictor of actual self, but just marginally insignificant (p= .0864). The interaction effect of both is not significant as well (p= .6222).
TABLE 4.6: Model summary Actual Self outcome variable
Coefficient t p LLCI ULCI
Perceived Design Innovativeness -,2042 -1,0125 ,3129 -,6027 ,1942 Consumer Innovativeness ,1438 1,7256 ,0864 -,0208 ,3085
Looking at the regression table where brand love is the outcome variable (table 4.7) we see that actual self is a statistically significant predictor of brand love (p= .000) and therefor, hypothesis 2 (Products with high Self-Congruity receive higher Brand Love. ) is accepted. Remarkably, perceived design innovativeness has a significant relationship with brand love as well (p= .0002), so hypothesis 1 (Products with higher Perceived Design Innovativeness receive higher Brand Love.) is supported. If the bootstrap confidence interval contains zero this gives an indication of what the indirect effect of the population value is. If not significant at .05, it to 95% contains zero, so the population value is likely to be zero and there is no indirect effect of actual self.
TABLE 4.7: Model summary Brand Love outcome variable
Coefficient t p LLCI ULCI
Actual Self ,3465 5,7861 ,0000 ,2282 ,4649 Perceived Design Innovativeness ,5105 3,7903 ,0002 ,2444 ,7765 Product Type ,0077 ,0595 ,9526 -,2467 ,2621 Consumer Innovativeness ,0033 ,0500 ,9602 -,1287 ,1354
When the consumer innovativeness is low , either in the hedonic(p= .2486) and utilitarian (p=. 0961) condition the effect is not significantly different from zero. These findings support hypothesis 4 (High perceived design innovativeness does have a positive (negative) effect on self-congruity for people scoring high (low) on consumer innovativeness and design acumen.) that the effect of perceived design innovativeness on actual self is influenced by the type of product.
The indirect effect through actual self is not significant among the groups so there is no mediation, and there is still a direct effect from perceived design innovativeness on brand love. Therefore the hypothesis is rejected.
TABLE4.8: Model summary Brand Love outcome variable
Coefficient t p LLCI ULCI
Actual Self ,3465 5,7861 ,0000 ,2282 ,4649 Perceived Design Innovativeness ,5105 3,7903 ,0002 ,2444 ,7765 Product Type ,0077 ,0595 ,9526 -,2467 ,2621 Consumer Innovativeness ,0033 ,0500 ,9602 -,1287 ,1354
4.3.7Moderating effect of Product Type (H5b)
“The positive effect of self-congruity on brand love is stronger for more hedonic perceived products.”
To determine whether there is a significant difference in the effect of product type on brand love when we control for another (covariate) variable, self-congruity, we conduct an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The results can be found in appendix J. It might be that the non-significant effect of product type on brand love gets less insignificant when we adjust the mean for self-congruity. We add the covariate self-congruity into the linear model as an extra predictor for brand love. The means from the ANOVA get adjusted for the added variable, actual self, and then compare the means and the adjusted means. First of all we test whether product type does have a different effect on brand love. As the univariate analysis of variance shows, there is no significant difference as pan gets an average mean of 3.6 and mobile phone a mean of 3,6 as well. So the variance between the two groups is homogeneous, brand love does not differ between hedonic and utilitarian products. We now add the covariate self-congruity to see whether the relationship gets a different meaning when controlling for another variable. We need to look at the homogeneity of regression assumption, whether an interaction of product type and actual self has an effect on brand love. In this case as we can see from the between subject table, there is no effect of the interaction between the two variables on brand love so we now are able to test the main hypothesis.
control for self-congruity in the product type and brand love relationship, there is still no difference in means (hedonic versus utilitarian). There is no significant difference between hedonic versus utilitarian products on brand love when controlling for the difference in self-congruity. The variance are not statistically different in means (F= .104; p= .747).
5. CONCLUSION
“How does self-congruity mediate the relationship between design innovativeness and brand love? The moderating role of consumer characteristics and product category.”
5.1 General Discussion
This research has integrated the fields of innovation management (New Product Development and innovative product design) with the branding and marketing concept to find overlap between the two research fields. Most research takes the lack in literature overlap between these research fields into account in the limitations of their studies and does not go into detailed analyses to find answers. Many are directed towards the marketing strategies of new and innovative products and how and to what degree they should be marketed. This study clearly makes a distinction between product categories and their level of perceived innovativeness and the influence on brand love. Brand love is a topic that is rarely discussed in the innovation field literature but does have an important contribution to the marketing and selling of products and especially the loyalty of the consumer which is an essential part of the current market situation. Taking also into account the different consumer characteristics fills an important gap in the literature. Consumers differ in their behavior and reactions to products and brands, which is grounded in the fact that they are human beings with different characteristics traits and preferences which are important to be taken into account. Nowadays tailor made products and personalized designs are important for consumers as they know exactly what they want and they do not like to make sacrifices. As not every product, brand and company can and will offer custom-made products and designs, they can try to get as close to their target customer with their existing products as possible. Therefore it is necessary to study different consumer characteristics and behaviors as well as their reactions to certain products to be able to find the right target market for your brand.
This study contributes to the literature by investigating the influence of product innovativeness on brand love. It finds that there is a direct influence between the two. Consumer characteristics do not seem to influence the relative strength of the relationship between innovative design and self-congruity, and between self-congruity and brand love. Different product categories were accounted for which is important in the current market place and especially when considering deep emotional bonding with brands and products as essential for brand love. This study accounts for as much influencing factors on consumer behavior as possible. Self-congruity has been taken into account, which on hindsight based on the statistical analyses seems to be one of the most important factors in predicting brand love.
consumers are used to, the possibility that they create a feeling of brand love with the brand is higher. Low perceived design innovativeness might give consumers an indication of outdated and boring and not exciting enough to create a deeper emotional bond with. As expected, self-congruity, so the fit between the image a consumer has about himself and the image of the brand or product he created in his head, does have a positive impact on emotional brand attachment. Consumers are often looking for goods and products to express to their environment who they are and where they belong to. An emotional bonding with a product that lets their peers and other people see who they are is indeed a logical, human trait. The moderated mediation of self-congruity between perceived design innovativeness and brand love including moderating variables consumer characteristics and product type did not show significant results. In line with the expectations, self-congruity is an antecedent of brand love as consumers do not create an emotional bond with a product or brand which they do not think fits their personal image. Also, whether a consumer sees himself as more of less innovative should have had an impact on their self congruity and therefor the brand love outcome. As the effect of consumer innovativeness is just marginally insignificant, there might still be a logical interface between the two variables.
utilitarian products. That might be due to the fact that highly innovative utilitarian products can be seen as too far fetched for consumers. Throughout the whole research, there was no significant effect of product type on brand love to be found. Another explanation for this might be that most of the respondents were students. They identify better with innovative mobile phones compared to pans as they are more experienced and known with that product category.
The results of this study show that there is a huge importance of including several factors into the analysis of brand related outcomes to make them more predictable and accountable. It shows that consumer characteristics and their fit with the product do have an enormous impact for innovatively designed products and that the fit is the most important predictor for brand love to occur. As brand love is considered the ultimate consumer satisfaction and loyalty, this study shows that especially for the marketing of innovative products taking into account the target market characteristics and the fit is an important issue. Companies need to analyze their target market first and find a fit with their product portfolio to successfully create a long-term emotional bonding.
5.2 Limitations and Further Research
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