Modeling Consumer Behavior From Brand Attachment To Brand Passion:A Self-determination Theory Perspective

Though there has been growing interest in brand attachment and brand passion among both consumer scholars and brand managers,at present there exists little empirical knowledge about shaping consumer behaviour from brand attachment to brand passion.This dissertation has taken a theoretical approach to understanding consumer brand attachment and brand passion by addressing three fundamental questions:1)Why consumer form a strong brand attachment and what motivates them to pay a higher price for a brand and word-of-mouth?2)What is the relationship between brand attachment and brand passion and whether brand attachment or brand passion is more predictive of consumer actual purchase intentions?3)What contributes to the development of brand passion and whether one's brand passion can be transferred to others?A tripartite theoretical framework linking antecedents and outcomes of brand attachment and brand passion was developed to address these three questions.To this end,the six separate but related studies were designed that stem from the macro research framework.To address these research questions,this dissertation seeks to deepen our understanding by utilizing concepts from basic psychology needs Theory(BPNT)of self-determination theory(SDT),organismic integration theory(OIT)of SDT,relationship motivation theory(RMT)of SDT,emotional contagion theory(ECT),gender schema theory(GST),and consumer socialization theory(CST).To this end,the participants from Pakistan,South Korea,and China were recruited,and the hypotheses for this dissertation(Study 1-6)were tested by employing various data analysis techniques such as Median Split Test,Correlations-Analysis,Exploratory Factor Analysis,Confirmatory Factor Analysis,Structural Equation Modeling,Moderation Analysis,Mediation Analysis,Moderated Moderation Analysis,Moderated Moderated-Mediation Analysis,Common Method Bias,and Measurement Invariance Test.The results of Study 1 show that the effects of three product design dimensions on each form of psychological need satisfaction and the subsequent brand attachment were greater for Pakistanis than for Koreans and Chinese.In particular,relatedness satisfaction was found to be a stronger driver of brand attachment for Pakistanis and Chinese than for Koreans,whereas autonomy satisfaction was found to more promising at explaining consumer attachment to brands for Koreans than for Chinese.Competence and relatedness satisfaction failed to capture brand attachment for Koreans.The results of Study 2 show that the effects of three product designs on self-determined needs satisfaction were also significantly positive for other consumer behavior outcomes such as WTP a premium and WOM across samples.The results further show that self-determined needs satisfaction had the strongest positive effect on WTP a premium and the strongest negative effect on vindictive WOM for Pakistanis.Self-determined needs frustration had the strongest negative effect on the WTP a premium for Chinese participants and an equivalent magnitude effect on vindictive WOM for Pakistani and Chinese participants.The cross-cultural gender-specific findings revealed that Pakistani men are more aesthetic and hedonic than women in Pakistan.Surprisingly,Chinese women resemble Pakistani men and prefer aesthetically pleasing products.Chinese men resemble Pakistani women in terms of little interest in symbolic products,whereas Chinese women and Pakistani men respond similarly regarding their decisions to choose symbolic products.The results of Study 3 show that when brand attachment and brand passion were assessed,consumer brand passion was found to have the greatest effect on purchase intention.The findings of moderation analysis further reveal that brand attachment is more capable of capturing consumer purchase intention of convenience product,while brand passion is more promising for increasing consumer purchase intention of high involvement shopping product.Results of Study 4 show that retailer feedback had a strongest positive effect on external consumer motivation.Similarly,when intrinsic motivation and the three types of extrinsic motivation(identified,introjected,and external)were assessed,external motivation was found to have the greatest effect on consumer brand passion The moderation results suggest that consumers with low perceived social influence expressed higher intrinsic and identified motivation about the brand than thosewith high social influence.The gender-specific findings suggest that intrinsic motivation better captures the brand passion of women than that of men,while external motivation appears to be more salient for men than for women.The moderation of age reveals that external motivation is more capable of capturing the brand passion of older customers,while introjected motivation is more promising for increasing brand passion among young customers.The results of Study 5 show that the indirect effect of celebrity credibility on brand passion via relatedness needs satisfaction is greater than a direct effect of celebrity credibility on brand passion.The results further reveal that the effect of celebrity credibility on relatedness needs satisfaction is salient when the endorser is a young female celebrity but not when the endorser is a young male celebrity.Similarly,the effect of celebrity credibility on relatedness needs satisfaction is more prominent when the endorser is an older male celebrity than when the endorser is an older female celebrity.The results of Study 6 provide evidence that parents' brand passion can be translated into the child's passion via emotional contagion for daughters who live with their parents but not those who live independently of their parents.Similarly,parents' brand passion can be transferred to sons regardless of their geographical distance.Finally,this dissertation discusses in depth the theoretical and managerial implications of the findings of each theoretical model and provides a platform for several future research endeavors.