DEVELOPING AFFECTIVE BRAND COMMITMENT THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

Brands, like humans, can serve as legitimate relationship partners. Brand relationships can provide consumers with resources in making decisions, meeting their needs, and motivating them. Marketers are using social media as a way to promote their brands and build consumer brand relationships. This research examines how emotional, or affect-based brand relationships, are developed in online social communities. It explores this phenomenon in the context of personal branding for music artists and uses Facebook as a social medium. A conceptual model is developed and empirically tested. Findings indicate that emotional relationships are cultivated by the intimacy and self-connection a consumer has toward the brand, or artist. This intimacy and connection can lead to an emotionally based attachment and bond, or affective commitment. Strong affective commitment from the consumer can be extremely valuable to the branded artist and his/her music because it leads to loyalty in the form of purchase behavior, reduced digital piracy, support of artistic vision and advocacy for the artist. However, value co-creation also plays an important role in developing emotionally based brand relationships and value-co-creation interacts with the impact of affective commitment on loyalty and advocacy. Implications for marketers managing brands and consumer brand relationships are discussed.