An Emerging Consumer Experience: Emotional Branding

Abstract

In an era where companies compete to make their brands distinctive the ultimate solution seems to be the establishment of consumer-brand linkages at the sensual and emotional level. This way marketers aim at developing deeper, long-lasting, and strong brand attachments for the consumers. Although there is substantial amount of evidence in the literature regarding the tipping importance of emotions in building strong connections between consumers and brands through penetrating into their own values, hence an emotion based branding strategy, little effort has been canalized to deepen and extend the research on emotional branding. This research aims to deepen our understanding of the potential nature of emotions in creating strong brand attachments between consumers and brands, which is often addressed by the emotional branding strategy of the firm. To tap into the domain of emotional branding first the emotion-cognition approach needs to be recognized, second the key to position the brand into the core of consumers' lives and create a self-congruence by allowing the consumer to identify him/herself with the brand ought to be identified and third a framework on the antecedents and consequences of a successful and sustainable emotional branding strategy has to be developed, which reflects the systematization of this research. Finally, suggestions for future studies and concluding remarks are presented. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.