Guest editorial: 30 years of brand relationship research

Citation

Fetscherin, M. and Veloutsou, C. (2024), "Guest editorial: 30 years of brand relationship research", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 413-418. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-05-2024-024

1. Introduction

Last year (2023) marked the 30-year milestone of consumer brand relationship research. Can you believe that it has been 30 years since Blackstone’s (1993) initial research, followed by Fajer and Schouten’s (1995) and Fournier’s (1998) papers? Together they have formed the basis and inspired the brand relationships field. Since these early days, the consumer brand relationship field, or brand relationship in short, has evolved and growing in scope and complexity. The early papers portrayed brands as active participants in brand relationships, laying the foundation for a diverse study area that captivates both academic and practical attention from various disciplines over the last three decades. The progress of this field is demonstrated by the creation and implementation of diverse cutting-edge metrics and frameworks (Fetscherin et al., 2021) aimed at comprehending the different brand relationship types varying in polarity and strength (Fetscherin et al., 2019), also identified in bibliometric literature engagement (Alvarez et al., 2023).

The relationship paradigm comes as a response to brands today not merely being symbols of transactions; but having evolved into entities with which consumers form relationships, such as engage, interact, experience and co-create meaning and value (Bagozzi et al., 2021). This shift in perspective underscores the development of two main types of brand-centric relationships: individual and collective (Veloutsou, 2009; Veloutsou and Ruiz Mafe, 2020). Individual brand relationships emerge when consumers connect to brands on a personal level, often leading to deep emotional bonds, regardless of ownership. Collectively, consumers seek out others with similar brand affinities, forming communities, tribes or brand-centric collectives with consisting of members sharing a collective identity, sharing information, enjoying communal activities and expressing shared brand enthusiasm.

In that respect, brand relationships have transformed from an initial concept introduced over three decades ago into a robust field within marketing. This evolution has seen a transition from exploratory investigations to the development of measurement tools and a broadening of academic encounter. The creation of measurement instruments such as the MBLM Brand Intimacy Study (MBLM, 2022) and Edelman’s Trust Barometer (Edelman, 2024) indicates the concept’s relevance to both academia and practitioners. This issue in the Journal of Product and Brand Management aims to contribute to provide first an update on this research field, and then particularly presents the latest articles on that field.

2. Current state of research

The research approach adopted in this editorial follows the same methodology established by Fetscherin and Heinrich (2015) and Fetscherin et al.’s (2019) special issue editorial in the Journal of Product and Brand Management. In construct with other recent bibliometric work using Scopus and a specific set of keywords to assess collective brand relationships (Roy Bhattacharjee et al., 2022; Veloutsou and Liao, 2023), or both individual and collective brand relationships in the online context (Veloutsou and Ruiz Mafe, 2020). The papers selected for this analysis were extracted from the Web of Science (WoS) and are publications citing Fournier’s (1998) seminal work. The purpose of this work is to complement the previous two bibliometric analyses (Fetscherin and Heinrich, 2015; Fetscherin et al., 2019) by collecting data since the last bibliometric paper in 2019 based on data until November 2018. To achieve this goal, this data set includes papers published between January 1, 2018 and February 22, 2024 (date retrieved from WoS). To demonstrate the trend in the number of publications per year, the data from the previous two bibliometric studies is combined with the data downloaded for the current analysis, without double counting work published in 2018. It needs to be noted that, given the inclusion criteria and choices the process is not totally replicable, because the time windows they cover cannot be exactly repeated since they are not up to the end of a period that the database recognizes (calendar year). The selected papers for analysis in this editorial focus on individual consumer brand relationships in any context citing Fournier’s (1998) seminal paper, but this choice has possibly led to omitting some relevant work not citing this particular article.

The concept of brand relationship has become widely accepted in the marketing field. After an introduction stage (around 1993–2010), brand relationship went into a significant growth stage between 2010 and 2020 and it looks as if it might be entering the mature stage since 2020 with less growth in the number of papers published but with a consistent number of around 250 papers per year published (Figure 1). More specifically 251 papers were published in 2019, 255 papers in 2020, 267 papers in 2021, and 258 and 256 papers in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

To assess and compare these three periods, the number of articles published, the average number of articles published per year, the total number of contributing authors and journals publishing brand relationship-related articles were examined (Table 1). A breakdown of the main disciplines these journals belong to, demonstrates that business and management are the two dominant subject disciplines. There is a clear and substantial growth in research output, collaboration and diversity of publication venues across the evaluated periods, with the current editorial highlighting the most substantial data set, the highest average of articles published per year (close to 250 papers), the most authors (over 3,300) and the greatest variety of journals when compared to the previous two bibliometric studies. This trend suggests not only an increase in research activity but also a significant expansion of the research community and dissemination channels over the last three decades.

The comparison clearly demonstrates an evolving landscape of academic research, where the volume of contributions, the scale of authorship and the spectrum of publication outlets have increased significantly, reflecting a vibrant and growing marketing field. This evolution points to a broader engagement with the subject matter, as also exemplified with the fact that the five main disciplines during the introduction stage of brand relationship represented 93% of papers published compared to the latest data set which shows the same main disciplines represent 76% of all papers published. This further underscores the dynamic nature of the research environment and increasing diversity from the late 1990s to the present day. This finding is supported by an increase in the average number of articles published per year by around seven-fold between the first period of analysis and now (from 33 to 245).

3. Most productive journals and scholars

A comparison of the journals publishing most brand relationship papers, ranked by the total number of articles published from the existing data set (Table 2), demonstrates a few journals are contributing consistently more than others in this field. The Journal of Business Research leads the brand relationship research with 103 articles published since 2018. This high volume might be related to the overall high volume of marketing papers published from the journal, but also suggests that it is a key platform for scholars seeking to make a significant impact in the field due to its broad appeal and rigorous standards. Next, with 82 articles published, is the Journal of Product and Brand Management followed by the Journal of Brand Management with 58 articles published on brand relationship since 2018.

Another important observation is that it appears there are three groups of journals when it comes to be the top publisher of brand relationship research. The first group includes journals that have systematically published many articles on this topic during the last few decades and were featured in at least the two most recent bibliometric studies as top producers: These journals are the Journal of Business Research, the Journal of Product & Brand Management, the Journal of Brand Management, the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, the European Journal of Marketing, Psychology & Marketing and the Journal of Consumer Research. The second group consists of journals that did not publish many articles prior to 2018 but now are among the top-producing ones to disseminate brand relationship research. These journals are Sustainability, Frontiers of Psychology and the Journal of Consumer Behavior. The third group consists of journals that have published many brand relationship papers in the past; however, they are not anymore among the top ten producing journals publishing on brand relationship. These are the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. We are not advocating that authors change their submission strategy for these journals, but we do want to point out that given the very low acceptance rate of the last group’s journals coupled with the relatively low numbers of brand relationship articles published in these journals (Table 2), this suggests that it may be even more difficult to be published in these journals on this topic.

The distribution of articles across these journals provides another valuable insight into the emerging trends in the field of brand relationships. It emphasizes the field’s interdisciplinary nature, the significance of sustainability and the critical role of psychological insights in understanding brand relationships. This provides a roadmap for scholars and practitioners to navigate this research landscape, identify key journals for dissemination and understanding emerging themes in consumer-brand dynamics.

Remarkably, Paula Rodrigues, Abhigyan Sarkar and Juhi Gahlot Sarkar were the most productive scholars since 2018 with each having 12 journal articles published, followed by others (Table 3). In terms of impact of these top ten most productive scholars, the most total citations received have been by Vikas Kumar (271) followed by Marc Fetscherin (234), Soyeon Kim (198), Pantea Foroudi (170) and Jiseon Ahn (169).

4. Trends in brand relationship

The themes of the top ten most cited articles published since 2018 (Table 4), sorted by the total number of citations within the retrieved data set, also support the state of development in the field and research engagement with many different aspects of brand relationship.

The 1,472 papers from the retrieved data set were associated with 4,323 keywords. Most of the keywords used were related and often describing the same general topic, rather than distinct ones. For example, reporting brackets include the number of times this keyword was used by papers, in addition to the broad keyword Brand Love (136 papers), keywords such as Green Brand Love (3), Destination Brand Love (2), Islamic Brand Love (1), Nostalgic Brand Love (1), Place Brand Love (1), Romantic Brand Love (1) and other variations of Brand Love were reported for Brand Loyalty, researchers used Brand Loyalty (111 papers) but also Destination Brand Loyalty (2), Hotel Brand Loyalty (1), Store Brand Loyalty (1), Brand Loyalty Process (1) and many other various of Brand Loyalty.

To the best of their abilities, the authors manually grouped these into mutually exclusive main keywords to determine the most commonly used one (Figure 2). This analysis does only report the most frequently used keywords, rather than the totality of 4,323 different keywords totaling 7,311 mentions. However, this list provides additional insights into the topics and themes investigated in papers over the last few years.

5. Articles in this issue

This special issue consists of five papers, four focusing on brands as relationship builders at an individual level, and one on the contribution of brands in the development of relationships at a collective level. Earlier versions of all this work were presented at the 7th International Consumer Brand Relationship Conference, that took place October 13–15, 2022, at Rollins College in Florida (USA).

In the first paper of this special issue, Melanie Koskie, Ryan Freling, William Locander and Traci Freling examine the relatively not well-examined concept of brand coolness and its effect on purchase intention, considering brand attachment and brand gratitude. Using data collected from an online survey of a Qualtrics panel of 356 US consumers, they report that cool brands increase repurchase intention, with emotional brand attachment and brand gratitude being parallel mediators of the relationship between the two. The impact of brand coolness on brand gratitude is moderated by social visibility, while publicly consumed cool brands are stimulating greater brand gratitude than those that are privately consumed.

Focusing on luxury tourism as a context and examining hotel online reviews and using interpersonal deception theory and social proof theory as lenses, Maria Petrescu, John Gironda and Kathleen O’Leary, evaluate and structure the basic heuristics consumers use in evaluating word-of-mouth. This work uses a two-study mixed-methods approach, with a first study a qualitative conceptual mapping analysis and a second study further examining the themes using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and their causal complex associations. The analysis finds that consumers use a combination of social and interpersonal communication heuristics to extract information from reviews. Social communication heuristics are functional, objective review characteristics, such as numbers and stars, while other factors, including clout, authenticity and analytic tone, as interpersonal communication heuristics.

The paper from Tessa Garcia-Collart that follows reports results from two empirical studies with student and online participant samples. The work focuses on brand communication and brand engagement in the early stages of external brand crises that brand relationships exist and aims to provide insights on crisis management while nurturing brand relationships. The results explain the interplay between consumers’ attitudes, brand engagement, self-brand connections and crisis-related versus noncrisis-related brand messages and the reaction of consumers less and more socially connected.

Abhishek Yadav’s work focuses on consumer and brand personalities on negative brand relationships. This work builds on data collected from an international sample of 370 brand haters analyzed using partial least square-based structural equation modeling. The findings suggest that negatively valenced brand personality dimensions of responsibility and activity lead to brand hate, and consequently behavioral outcomes, specifically anti-brand actions and non-purchase intention. Neuroticism as a consumer personality trace significantly moderates the relationship between both personality dimensions and brand hate.

Examining collective brand relationships in social media brand communities as a context, Magdalena Marchowska-Raza and Jennifer Rowley, examine the value formation processes to establish types of value formation. After organizing and reporting possible types of value that can be formed, created and co-creation for consumers and brands this work adopts a netnographic approach, data collected from a social media cosmetics brand community and operational netnographic protocols to identify disparate value types and processes for their creation. The value types are identified in consumer-to-consumer, brand-to-consumer and consumer-to-brand (C2B interactions) but also independently by consumers. The findings are organized in a model that visually presents the consumer and brand value creation and co-creation processes, accommodating distinct perspectives of involved in the process stakeholder.

As editors who worked on the production of this special issue, we hope that it enlightens our current understanding of brand relationships, and you will find reading it interesting and enjoyable.

Figures

Figure 1

Number of publications per year

Figure 2

Most frequent keywords

Table 1

The three bibliometric analysis outputs – comparison table

	This paper (2024)	Fetscherin et al. (2019)	Fetscherin and Heinrich (2015)
Timeframe	6 years 2018–2024	8 years 2010–2018	12 years 1998–2010
Total number of articles	1,472	1,129	392
Average published articles/year	245	141	33
Total no. of authors	3,314	2,309	685
Total no. of journals	385	311	101
Main discipline
Business (%) Management (%) Psychology applied (%) Hospitality (%) Communication (%) Total (5 disciplines, in percent)	48 16 6 3 3 76	52 14 7 6 3 82	61 16 9 3 4 93

Source: Author’s own work

Table 2

Most productive journals since 2018

	This article (2024)		Fetscherin et al. (2019)		Fetscherin and Heinrich (2015)
Journal	Rank	PBR	Rank	PBR	Rank	PBR
Journal of Business Research (JBR)	1	103	1	87	4	28
Journal of Product and Brand Management (JPBM)	2	82	4	43	–
Journal of Brand Management (JBM)	3	58	8	24	–
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services (JRCS)	4	45	7	25	–
European Journal of Marketing (EJM)	5	43	3	45	8	11
Psychology & Marketing (P&M)	6	43	2	57	3	34
Sustainability (S)	7	42	–	–	–
Frontiers of Psychology (FP)	8	26	–	–	–
Journal of Consumer Behavior (JCB)	9	25	–	–	–
Journal of Consumer Research (JCR)	10	25	6	36	1	46
Journal of Consumer Psychology (JCP)	–	–	5	38	6	13
Journal of Marketing (JM)	–	–	9	21	5	25
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS)	–	–	10	17	9	10

Note:

P_BR – number of articles published related to brand relationship

Source: Author’s own work

Table 3

Most productive scholars since 2018

Rank	Author	PBR	TLC	TLC/t	TGC	TGC/t
1	Rodrigues, P.	12	43	7.5	150	34.58
2	Sarkar, A.	12	26	5.3	115	22.97
3	Sarkar, J.G.	12	26	5.3	115	22.97
4	Kim, S.	10	6	1.64	198	41.63
5	Kumar, V.	10	31	6.8	271	57.6
6	Ahn, J.	9	11	1.87	169	32.08
7	Foroudi, P.	8	1	0.2	170	38.07
8	Borges, A.P.	7	5	1.33	35	16.42
9	Fetscherin, M.	7	72	12.75	234	48.75
10	Kim, J.	7	16	3.04	88	19.45

Notes:

P_BR – number of articles published related to brand relationship|TLC total local (from WoS data set) citations received|TGC total global (from WoS data set and other databases) citations received|TLC/t average local citations received per year|TGC/t average global citations received per year

Source: Author’s own work

Table 4

Most cited articles since 2018

#	Date/author/journal	Title	TLC	TLC/t	TGC	TGC/t
1	Bairrada et al. (2018)	Antecedents and outcomes of brand love: utilitarian and symbolic brand qualities	47	6.71	111	15.86
2	Khamitov et al. (2019)	How well do consumer-brand relationships drive customer brand loyalty?	38	6.33	109	18.17
3	Palusuk et al. (2019)	“All you need is brand love”: a critical review and comprehensive conceptual framework for brand love	35	5.83	76	12.67
4	Coelho et al. (2019)	Brand communities' relational outcomes, through brand love	34	5.67	84	14
5	Puzakova and Aggarwal (2018)	Brands as rivals: consumer pursuit of distinctiveness and the role of brand anthropomorphism	32	4.57	94	13.43
6	Bairrada et al. (2019)	The impact of brand personality on consumer behavior: the role of brand love	32	5.33	63	10.5
7	Machado et al. (2019)	Brand gender and consumer-based brand equity on Facebook: the mediating role of consumer-brand engagement and brand love	28	4.67	94	15.67
8	Hoffman and Novak (2018)	Consumer and object experience in the Internet of Things: an assemblage theory approach	27	3.86	310	44.29
9	Fetscherin (2019)	The five types of brand hate: how they affect consumer behavior	26	4.33	88	14.67
10	Tuškej and Podnar (2018)	Consumers' identification with corporate brands: brand prestige, anthropomorphism and engagement in social media	25	3.57	81	11.57

Notes:

TLC total local (from WoS data set) citations received|TGC total global (from WoS data set and other databases) citations received|TLC/t average local citations received per year|TGC/t average global citations received per year

Source: Author’s own work