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Considering the ongoing discourse on diversity, equity and inclusion, brands aim to develop marketing campaigns that demonstrate respect for all individuals. Despite these intentions, many advertisements still provoke strong negative reactions from consumers due to brand transgressions in social media marketing campaigns that violate these values. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the repercussions that such social media marketing campaigns have on brands, categorizing these campaigns as brand transgressions in social media advertising.

This research uses a mixed-method design that includes semi-structured interviews (Study 1), a content analysis (Study 2) and an online experiment (Study 3).

This paper clarifies the elements that qualify as brand transgressions in advertising within the diversity, equity and inclusion discourse. The negative electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) associated with brand transgressions in advertising comprises negative emotions (e.g. anger, contempt, disgust and hate) and behavioural intentions to penalize the brand (e.g. negative word-of-mouth, brand avoidance and protest behaviours). The negative e-WOM stemming from these transgressions amplifies the adverse consequences for consumer–brand relationships by negatively influencing other consumers through sympathy towards the offended parties.

This paper offers brand managers guidelines for preventing and managing negative consumer reactions towards brands based on their responses to marketing campaigns that contradict the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion.

This paper contributes to the literature on brand transgressions related to diversity, equity and inclusion values by exploring their impact on consumer–brand relationships and highlighting the pivotal role of sympathy in perpetuating negative consequences.

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which nostalgic advertising can foster brand love. It examines the effects of two common forms of nostalgia in advertising – that is, personal and historical nostalgia – on consumers’ love towards a brand in both a developed (the UK) and a developing country (India).

A pre-test and post-test quasi-experimental study was conducted with two representative samples of consumers (i.e. 277 British and 255 Indian). Respondents were randomly exposed to one ad evoking either personal or historical nostalgia, or a non-nostalgic ad.

The results indicate that the use of nostalgia in advertising increases brand love in both countries. However, the effectiveness of each type of nostalgia varies depending on the country considered. In the UK, personal nostalgia increases brand love more than historical nostalgia, whereas, in India, historical nostalgia was found to be more significantly related to brand love than personal nostalgia.

The primary implication for marketers is to consider nostalgic advertising as a critical lever to building longer-term value for a brand (i.e. brand love) whilst being mindful of the country-specific differences regarding how such a lever should be executed to achieve effectiveness be effective.

The paper contributes to the advancement of the brand love literature by clarifying whether, and under what circumstances, the use of specific types of nostalgia in advertising increases consumers’ love towards a brand.

The paper focuses on extended reality technologies and their potential contribution to the improvement of services. First, it identifies extended reality technologies (AR/VR) as the most promising interfaces to enable an experiential consumption of the services. It then summarises their properties and discusses similarities and differences. Last, it maps these technologies onto a consumer psychology framework of experience to derive possible areas of future research.

The authors conduct a literature review and present a conceptual framework of AR/VR contributions on experience.

The study provides an up-to-date literature review including AR and VR applications for consumer and service experience, as well as recommendations for possible research directions.

Whereas previous contributions adopted the same, experiential approach but focused on different technology (e.g. AI) or considered multiple interfaces and their impact on the consumer journey (mostly transactions), this paper aims at digging deeper into AR/VR, while retaining an experiential view on consumption that best serves the contextualisation of AR/VR.

This paper aims to advance the design-thinking approach in food from an engineering mind-set toward a positive psychology perspective by investigating how consumer experiences evoked by food-related activities can facilitate, stimulate and enhance individuals’ happiness and perceptions of life satisfaction.

A diary field experiment was conducted. Participants from a major European city were asked to reflect on their food-related activities, provide descriptions and answer questions on experiential stimulation derived from these activities in relation to happiness and perceived life satisfaction.

Food-related activities generally result in positive consumer experiences and psychological well-being. Experiential stimulation resulting from food activities is positively related to perceived life satisfaction directly and indirectly via pleasure and meaning. Although the authors found an overall positive relationship between these constructs, they also found differences based on the experience type considered. A “crescendo model” of experiences that details how experiences lead to happiness and perceived life satisfaction is presented.

This study is largely exploratory. Future research should adopt an experimental approach and further test the relationship between experiential stimulation, happiness and perceived life satisfaction in the context of food.

The paper offers innovation teams in food companies a practical “crescendo model” that can be used to design product–consumer interactions.

The research bridges literatures on design thinking, psychological well-being and consumer experiences. By studying the relationship between experiences, happiness and perceived life satisfaction in the context of food, the findings contribute to research on food well-being by expanding the notion of happiness seen only as pleasure. The research also contributes to work on design thinking by offering an experiential framework that contributes to the notion of consumer empathy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) – conceptualized as consisting of brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations, perceived value and brand loyalty – and market share for different brand types (global versus local) in different country groups (developed versus emerging).

This paper combines consumer–survey-based data, experts' coding and retail panel data of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands in 29 countries.

In developed countries, the relationship between each CBBE component (except for brand associations) with market share is stronger for local than global brands. In emerging countries, the relationship between each CBBE component with market share is stronger for global than local brands.

This paper contributes to better understanding the relationships between CBBE and market share by showing how CBBE components relate to market share for different brand types (global and local) in different country groups (developed and emerging). Limitations arise from constraints related to existing datasets (e.g. limited number of variables and type of product categories considered).

This paper offers insights to managers working in multinational FMCG companies, as it suggests which CBBE components relate more strongly to the global or local brands' market shares in different countries.

This paper analyzes the relationship between CBBE and market share by focusing on different brand types (global versus local) in different country groups (developed versus emerging). It does so by using a company dataset and showing correspondence with conceptualizations and measures of brand equity from the academic literature. It also considers a large set of 29 countries, extending research beyond national boundaries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the different relationship that brand love, compared with brand attitude, has with actual brand performance in a cross-national and cross-category context.

An empirical study was conducted in the USA, Russia and Indonesia to develop and validate a short but comprehensive measure of brand love. A brand attitude measure derived from the company’s tracking studies and behavioural measures derived from panel data were used to examine the different relationship of brand love and brand attitude with brand performance.

The findings show that consumers in the USA, Russia and Indonesia share a similar concept of brand love. They also show that brand love, compared with brand attitude, is more strongly related to growth in behavioural loyalty, whereas brand attitude, compared with brand love, is more strongly related to the brand size in the present.

The paper combines psychological and behavioural data from different sources. Future research may collect both types of data from the same sample of consumers. Besides, the paper uses brand love and brand attitude data related to loyal consumers and users, respectively. Future research may consider both types of consumers simultaneously.

The paper clarifies why brand love measures should be integrated in a company’s brand measurement system, and their specific contribution compared with brand attitude.

This paper is the first that examines brand love in a cross-national and cross-category context and that shows the relationship of brand love vs brand attitude with actual brand performance using company/industry-derived data.

This study aims to investigate the nature of brand hate, its antecedents and its outcomes.

The authors conduct two quantitative studies in Europe. In Study 1, a measure of brand hate is developed and its effects are tested on behavioral outcomes. In Study 2, the authors show how brand hate and its behavioral outcomes change depending on the reasons for brand hate.

The study conceptualizes brand hate as a constellation of negative emotions which is significantly associated with different negative behavioral outcomes, including complaining, negative WOM, protest and patronage reduction/cessation. Reasons for brand hate related to corporate wrongdoings and violation of expectations are associated with “attack-like” and “approach-like” strategies, whereas reasons related to taste systems are associated with “avoidance-like” strategies.

The study views brand hate as an affective phenomenon occurring at a point in time. Researchers could adopt a wider perspective by looking at the phenomenon of hate as a disposition/sentiment, not merely as an emotion. They could also adopt a longitudinal perspective to understand how brand hate develops over time and relate it to brand love.

The authors’ conceptualization of brand hate offers insights to companies about how to resist and prevent brand hate for one’s own brand.

The study provides a first conceptualization of brand hate and develops a scale for measuring it. The authors relate this conceptualization and measurement of brand hate to important behavioral outcomes and different types of antecedents.

This paper aims to outline the role of brands as relationship builders and to offer a better understanding of the recent developments and key literature in the area of consumer–brand relationships.

This paper is an editorial based mainly on a literature review on consumer–brand relationships. It uses the sentiment range and passion intensity to position various brand relationship constructs. This work follows the same bibliometric-analysis approach used by Fetscherin and Heinrich (2014) and looked for publications in the Web of Science on brand relationships, with reference to Fournier’s (1998) seminal work and data collected for the period between January 2010 and November 2018.

First, this work presents the key consumer–brand relationship terms and positions the work on brand love, brand like, brand hate, brand dislike and brand indifference. In addition, the bibliometric analysis offers a number of insights into the current state of the academic research in the area of consumer–brand relationships, including a clear indication that the research on consumer–brand relationships is increasing.

This work and the whole special issue together help in the understanding of brands as relationship builders, clearly explaining the continuum from strong positive or negative relationships with brands to no relationship with brands and the current state of research in the area.