The Impact Of Brand Anthropomorphism On Brand Evangelism

In the context of social media,many brands have established online brand communities.Some brand communities have adopted virtual brand image spokespersons to interact with consumers in the community,which have won the attention of many fans.The anthropomorphic marketing has become an important way to increase brand awareness.Doss(2014)believes that brand evangelist are both free advocates of the brand and are almost fanatical and high-level “fans” that can effectively increase the brand's viscosity and brand recommendation.Practice seems to confirm that brand anthropomorphism can increase consumer brand engagement,and in turn foster brand evangelism.However,research on brand anthropomorphism and brand evangelism is still in the beginning stage,and there is no related research to prove the relationship between them.Therefore,this article will take the model brand of the marketing world as an example,the brand community of Durex,with the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods,and uses two studies to explore the relationship between brand anthropomorphism,consumer brand engagement and brand evangelism.Study 1 used content analysis method and takes Durex online brand community as an example to analyze the influence of brand anthropomorphism on consumer brand engagement.By digging out the last year's blog data of Durex official micro-blog,and analyzing the performance(forwarding amount,commentary volume,and amount of praise)of consumer brand engagement to explore the impact of brand anthropomorphism on consumer brand engagement.Study 2 adopts the empirical method of questionnaire survey to collect data from fans of Durex online brand community and use statistical analysis software to analyze data in order to explore the effect of brand anthropomorphism on brand evangelism as well as testing the mediating role of consumer brand engagement.By analyzing the data from the above two studies,we have reached the two following conclusions:(1)Brand communities use brand anthropomorphism marketing strategy to communicate with the consumers,which can positively improve the consumer brand engagement.The two brand anthropomorphic characteristics,"theme symbol" and "slide line",have a significant positive impact on consumer brand engagement,which can significantly promote the interaction between consumers and brands.(2)Consumer brand engagement plays an entirely mediating role in the impact ofbrand anthropomorphism on brand evangelism.Brand anthropomorphism can positively affect consumer evangelism by improving consumer brand engagement.