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The effect of corporate brand reputation on brand attachment and brand loyalty: Automobile sector

Taylor & Francis
Cogent Business & Managment
Authors:
  • International School of Economics and Management - Lisbon University

Abstract

The current study aims to analyze the effect of corporate brand reputation on brand attachment and brand loyalty considering the automotive sector and the brands Tesla, Toyota, and Volvo. A sample of 327 participants, members of car brand communities, collaborate in a survey. Overall findings reveal that the perception of corporate brand reputation is more effective on enhancing brand loyalty than brand attachment. However, the effect could depend on the car brand strategy. We may also claim that customer citizen helping others is one of the most important corporate attributes perceived by customers of the three brands. Limitations and suggestions for further research are also provided.
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MARKETING | RESEARCH ARTICLE
The eect of corporate brand reputation on
brand attachment and brand loyalty: Automobile
sector
Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro, Eduardo Moraes Sarmento and Goulwen Le Bellego
Cogent Business & Management (2017), 4: 1360031
Brand
attachment
Loureiro et al., Cogent Business & Management (2017),
4: 1360031
https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2017.1360031
MARKETING | RESEARCH ARTICLE
The eect of corporate brand reputation on brand
attachment and brand loyalty: Automobile sector
Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro
1
*, Eduardo Moraes Sarmento
2
and Goulwen Le Bellego
1
Abstract:The current study aims to analyze the eect of corporate brand reputa-
tion on brand attachment and brand loyalty considering the automotive sector and
the brands Tesla, Toyota, and Volvo. A sample of 327 participants, members of car
brand communities, collaborate in a survey. Overall findings reveal that the percep-
tion of corporate brand reputation is more eective on enhancing brand loyalty than
brand attachment. However, the eect could depend on the car brand strategy. We
may also claim that customer citizen helping others is one of the most important
corporate attributes perceived by customers of the three brands. Limitations and
suggestions for further research are also provided.
Subjects: Persuasion; Business, Management and Accounting; Industry & Industrial
Studies
Keywords: corporate brand reputation; brand attachment; brand loyalty; automotive
industry
*Corresponding author: Sandra Maria
Correia Loureiro, Instituto Universitário
de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Business
Research Unit (BRU/UNIDE), Av. Forças
Armadas, 1649-026 Lisbon, Portugal
Email: sandramloureiro@netcabo.pt
Reviewing editor:
Len Tiu Wright, University of
Huddersfield, UK
Additional information is available at
the end of the article
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro (PhD) is a professor
at the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-
IUL), Business Research Unit (BRU/UNIDE), and
SOCIUS.
She has participated in several research
projects funded by the EU and FCT. She recently
won several awards, such as: the 2012 Best Paper
Premier Award presented by the Global Marketing
Conference, Highly commended paper Award
2014–7th EuroMed Conference and EuroMed
Research Business Institute (EMRBI), and Highly
Commended paper Award 2016–9th EuroMed
Conference and Best Paper Award 2016–ICCMI
2016.
Eduardo Moraes Sarmento (PhD) is a specialist
in areas like tourism, economics, and marketing.
He wrote various technical books and participated
in international chapter books and has written
various scientific papers in ANZMAC, Annals of
Tourism Research, and Anatolia, among other
prestigious institutions and journals. He has also
participated in various consultancy programs
abroad, mainly in Portugal, Cape Verde, Russia,
and European Union.
Goulwen Le Bellego (MSc) works as a supply
chain coordinator at Cooperl Arc Atlantique S.A,
France.
PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Cars are more than just goods that consumers
use to move from one point to another. Cars may
develop on consumers’ mind emotions and bonds.
This study analyzes the eect of corporate brand
reputation on brand attachment and brand loyalty
considering the brands: Tesla, Toyota, and Volvo.
A sample of 327 participants, members of car
brand communities, collaborate in a survey. Overall
findings reveal that the perception of corporate
brand reputation is more eective on enhancing
brand loyalty than brand attachment. Yet, the
eect could depend on the car brand strategy.
We may also claim that customer citizen helping
others is one of the most important corporate
attributes perceived by the customers of the three
brands.
Received: 11 June 2017
Accepted: 09 July 2017
First Published: 31 July 2017
© 2017 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution
(CC-BY) 4.0 license.
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Sandra Maria Correia
Loureiro
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1. Introduction
Attachment theory comes from the close relationship and the works done by Bowlby and colleagues,
who claim that human beings tend to seek proximity to significant others when they need aection,
accordance, or identification. Attachments can be understood beyond the person–person relation-
ship context (Belk, 1988). Brand attachment is regarded as emotional feelings that consumers have
toward a brand or product. Those feelings could become stronger to create true loyalty and passion
for customers to the brand (Batra, Ahuvia, & Bagozzi, 2012; Loureiro, Ruediger, & Demetris, 2012).
Following Park, MacInnis, Priester, Eisingerich, and Iacobucci (2010), the current study considers
two dimensions to measure brand attachment: brand self-connection and brand prominence. The
latter represents the extent to which positive feelings and memories about the attachment brand
are perceived as at the top of mind. Prominence reflects “the salience of the cognitive and aective
bond that connects the brand to the self” (Park et al., 2010, p. 2). The former involves the cognitive
and emotional connection between the brand and the self (Chaplin & Roedder John, 2005; Escalas,
2004).
Creating emotional brand attachment is a key success for all of these companies, brands, and
firms. This is motivated by the finding that such connections lead to higher level of consumer loyalty,
which increases a company’s financial performance (Park et al., 2010).
Actually, brand loyalty is a variable persecuted by companies in order to assure profitability.
Customers that are emotionally attached to a brand or a product can more likely have positive be-
havior toward this company. However, those positive behaviors toward the brand reflect a strong
attachment but have dierent conceptualizations. A strong attachment needs time to be developed
and it is often built on interactions between the person and the object of attachment (Baldwin,
Keelan, Fehr, Enns, & Koh-Rangarajoo, 1996). Those interactions are making sense for the customers
and attract strong emotions toward the object of attachment. Behaviors (brand loyalty) are reflect-
ing the evaluation that customer makes about a product. Those reactions can be developed even if
the customer doesn’t have any direct contact with the product. Hence, customers can have positive
behavior toward a product or a brand without having any contact with it. Moreover, customers can
have positive behavior toward numerous random products, even toward products that are not really
relevant and important in their daily life, whereas Ball and Tasaki (1992) argue that customers can
only be attached to few number of products that have a strong and deep connection with them. This
attachment may depend on the way customers and other publics think about the brand and the
organization where the product/service is manufactured or delivered (brand reputation) (Loureiro &
Kaufmann, 2016).
In this vein, brand loyalty and brand attachment have dierent roles and the way customers per-
ceive brand reputation may influence brand attachment and brand loyalty dierently. This study
intends to analyze the eect of brand reputation on brand attachment and brand loyalty consider-
ing the automotive sector. Could brand loyalty be more depending on the perception of brand repu-
tation (the way customers view the organization and interact with it) than the emotional bonds
between a brand and a customer?
The current study gives insights about these issues, analyzing the context of automotive industry.
Pollution and climate change problems have led many car brands to alter engines and other materi-
als in ways that reduce emissions of CO, CO2, and other harmful emissions and make cars safer.
These concerns may be mirrored in the reputation of the brands. Thus, for the propose of our study,
we select three brands with their origin in three dierent continents (Tesla from America, Volvo from
Europe, and Toyota from Portugal) and concerns about safety and environmental issues to analyze
the eect of customer perceptions of brand reputation on brand attachment and brand loyalty. The
remainder of this article comprises the theoretical background, method, results, as well as conclu-
sions and implications.
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2. Theoretical background
2.1. Brand attachment
Several researchers have studied attachment on dierent perspectives, from person–person attach-
ment to person–object attachment, resulting in that individual, a customer, establishing true bonds
to a brand or its product. Attachment leads to a strong commitment and may influence love and
passion when the bonds are very strength; hence, that makes customers truly loyal and gives him
passion for the brand (Loureiro et al., 2012).
Attachments can extend beyond the person–person relationship context (Belk, 1988). Indeed, re-
searchers from dierent fields suggest that customers can develop attachment to gifts (Mick &
DeMoss, 1990), places of residence (Hill & Stamey, 1990), brands (Schouten & McAlexander, 1995),
and other type of special favorite objects (Wallendorf & Arnould, 1988). The collection of character-
istics, traits, and memberships that cognitively represent an individual in memory is generally de-
scribed as the self-concept (Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984). Greenwald and Pratkanis (1984) claim
that customers can be attached to a brand in a way that the brand confers strong feelings to its
customers, like being part of his daily life, thus being an extension of the self. Brand attachment is
characterized by strong linkage or connectedness between the brand and the self (Schultz, Kleine, &
Kernan, 1989). The brand’s connection to one’s self, one’s identity, or self-concept is central to the
emotional attachment construct (Mikulincer, Hirschberger, Nachmias, & Gillath, 2001).
2.2. Brand reputation
The reputation of a brand’s name has been described as an extrinsic cue, that is an attribute related
to the product (Zeithaml, 1988) but not of the physical composition of the product. Brand reputation
evolves all the time, and it is mainly created by the flow of information from one user to another
(Herbig & Milewicz, 1993). Reputation embodies the general estimation in which a company is held
by employees, customers, suppliers, distributors, competitors, and the public (Fombrun & Shanley,
1990). Thus, firms compete for brand reputation knowing that those with a strong reputation across
their products can assume highest sales prices, thereby being more powerful than another competi-
tor (Loureiro & Kaufmann, 2016).
In order to capture the perception of consumer about the reputation of a brand, Walsh and Beatty
(2007, p. 129) propose
the customer’s overall evaluation of a firm based on his or her reactions to the firm’s goods,
services, communication activities, interactions with the firm and/or its representatives
or constituencies (such as employees, management, or other customers) and/or known
corporate activities.
In this study, we consider four dimensions to measure corporate reputation: customer orientation,
reliable and financially, product and service quality, and social and environmental responsibility.
Reputation refers to the more general emotional response that an individual has toward an organi-
zation as a consequence of its action over a longer period of time (Amis, 2003). Thus, reputation can
be seen as a driver to emotional brand attachment (Japutra, Ekinci, & Simkin, 2014).
H1: The perception of reputation is positively related to consumers’ emotional car brand
attachment.
2.3. Brand loyalty
The concept of brand loyalty has been pointed as an important construct in the marketing literature
for at least four decades, and most researchers agree that brand loyalty can create benefits such as
reduced marketing costs (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001), positive word of mouth (Sutikno, 2011),
business profitability (Kabiraj & Shanmugan, 2011), increased market share (Gounaris &
Stathakopoulos, 2004), and a competitive advantage in the market (Iglesias, Singh, &
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Batista-Foguet, 2011). Those positive outputs of brand loyalty mentioned above clearly show us how
important the impact of loyalty onto brands can be. Therefore, Khan and Mahmood (2012, p. 33)
suggested a definition that reflected these positive outputs by stating “Brand loyalty can be defined
as the customer’s unconditional commitment and a strong relationship with the brand which is not
likely to be aected under a normal circumstance.” Through literature review, most researchers and
others marketing practitioners agree that brand loyalty can be either true (Arnold & Reynolds, 2003)
or spurious (Iglesias et al., 2011). Spurious loyalty is driven by situational circumstances such as
price and convenience (Iglesias et al., 2011), while true brand loyalty is driven by some indicators of
previous psychological and aective attachment to the brand by the customer (Lin, 2010). Loyalty
has been seen as an outcome of a positive perception of brand reputation in dierent fields (Groth,
2005; Loureiro & Kastenholz, 2011; Walsh & Beatty, 2007). Therefore, we expected that car brand
reputation will enhance car brand loyalty:
H2: The perception of reputation is positively related to consumers’ car brand loyalty.
3. Method
First, a questionnaire was created including the items of the constructs elicited by the previous stud-
ies and a section for socio-demographic variables. Then, the questionnaire (before launched) was
pilot tested with the help of nine individuals, managers and members of the car brand communities,
to ensure that the questions were well understood by the respondents and that there were no prob-
lems with the wording or measurement scales. Only a few adjustments were made.
The car brands considered in this study are Tesla, Toyota, and Volvo. The criteria for choosing such
brands refer to the fact that the three brands are representative of three main concepts: Volvo (born
in Sweden-Europe) and the safety and social responsibility programs; Toyota (born in Japan-ASIA)
and quality, reliability, and carbon reduction and social responsibility programs; Tesla (born in United
States of America) and electric sport car programs. In this vein, we ask authorization to online brand
communities of the three brands to spread the questionnaire among their members and invite them
to participate in an online survey during February and March 2016.
Tesla manufacturer got attention from customers following the production of their first fully elec-
tric sports car: The Tesla Roadster. On March 2016, Tesla company unveiled its last car creation, the
Model III, full electric engine as their old sister. Although some negative news have been coming to
the public due to the failure of the automatic-driven system, Tesla is still a very promising and in-
novative car brand devoted to safety systems and sustainable issues. Initially founded in 1927 in
Sweden, Volvo brand has a long story on the automotive market. Now it is owned by Geely Group
China since 2010.
Volvo is internationally connected to safety systems and concerns about environment and sus-
tainability. The year 2015 was a big update for Volvo brand, mainly because the newly released
XC90, new design that will inspire a whole range of products, showed us their new lines for the S90
Sedan and future V90 Estate Wagon models.
Toyota Motor Corporation was created in 1937 in Japan. In July 2015, Toyota reported the produc-
tion of its 200-millionth vehicle. The brand is well known for their famous Hybrid Prius car; Toyota is
a pioneer in the electric and hybrid vehicle for mass production, the range of products that the com-
pany is still leading today.
Regarding the measurements, we measured the constructs with multi-item scales (six-point
Likert-type scale). Corporate brand reputation is assessed using a scale presented by Walsh and
Beatty (2007) and Groth (2005) for customer–customer interactions and customer–company inter-
actions. Actually, we consider six dimensions to measure brand reputation: customer orientation,
product and service quality, reliable and financially, social and environmental responsibility,
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customer citizen helping others, and customer citizen helping the company. Brand loyalty is based
on Arnold and Reynolds (2003), and brand attachment is adapted from Park et al. (2010).
Of the overall participants (327), 93% are male which represents the proportionality of the total
member of the communities contacted. Almost 60% (61.1%) range from 31 to 50 years of age.
However, this is acceptable due to the type of product in question. The number of participants using
each of the three brands is divided almost evenly.
4. Results
Multiple regression analysis was used to test if the corporate brand reputation personality signifi-
cantly predicted participants’ ratings of brand attachment and brand loyalty for three car brands
Tesla, Volvo, and Toyota. The degree of multicollinearity among the indicators and autocorrelation
were analyzed, and they do not pose problems.
The adequacy of the measurements is presented in Table 1. All variables show convergent validity
(values of AVE higher than 0.5). All variables are reliable since the composite reliability values ex-
ceeded the 0.7 (Nunnally, 1978) and the values of alpha de Cronbach exceed 0.7.
The results of the regression for Tesla indicate the six predictors explained 22.7% of the variance
(R2 = 0.23, F(6,96) = 4.71, p < .001) in brand attachment. It is found that customer citizen helping
others significantly predicted brand attachment (β = 0.426, p < 0.05), as does customer citizen help-
ing the company (β = −0.280, p < 0.05). The results also point out the six predictors explained 79.8%
of the variance in brand loyalty (R2 = 0.80, F(6,104) = 68.28, p < .001). Actually, product and service
quality (β = 0.415, p < 0.001), customer citizen helping the company (β = 0.163, p < 0.01), and social
and environmental responsibility (β = 0.121, p < 0.05) are significant in predicting brand loyalty (see
Table 2).
Regarding Volvo, the results of the regression indicate the six predictors explained 35.8% of the
variance (R2 = 0.36, F(2,78) = 8.40, p < 0.001) in brand attachment. It is found that customer citizen
helping others significantly predicted brand attachment (β = 0.373, p < 0.01), as does customer
Table 1. Measurement results
Notes: CR: Composite reliability; AVE: Average variance extracted; α: Alpha the Cronbach.
Tesla Volvo Toyota
Variable Mean AVE CR αMean AVE CR αMean AVE CR α
Customer orientation 5.3 0.877 0.955 0.927 5.3 0.900 0.964 0.942 5.3 0.871 0.953 0.913
Product and service quality 5.2 0.754 0.902 0.832 5.2 0.775 0.912 0.850 5.2 0.726 0.888 0.805
Reliable and financially 5.4 0.711 0.880 0.782 5.2 0.730 0.890 0.806 5.2 0.719 0.885 0.800
Social and environmental
responsibility
5.0 0.702 0.876 0.762 4.4 0.718 0.884 0.797 4.4 0.692 0.871 0.768
Customer citizen helping others 5.5 0.792 0.889 0.734 5.4 0.773 0.865 0.782 5.4 0.784 0.899 0.876
Customer citizen helping the
company
5.8 0.575 0.726 0.894 5.2 0,522 0.715 0,885 4.9 0.504 0.705 0.856
Brand attachment 4.5 0.676 0.949 0.935 4.5 0.689 0.952 0.943 4.3 0.750 0.964 0.956
Brand loyalty 5.3 0.867 0.952 0.919 5.2 0.869 0.962 0.992 5.0 0.869 0.971 0.898
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citizen helping the company (β = −0.370, p < 0.01). Customer orientation (β = 0.190, p < 0.05), prod-
uct and service quality (β = 0.226, p < 0.01), customer citizen helping others (β = 0.252, p < 0.01), and
customer citizen helping the company (β = 0.165, p < 0.05) are significant in predicting brand loyalty
(R2 = 0.79, F(6,82) = 51.069, p < 0.001) (see Table 3).
Considering Toyota, the results of the regression indicate the six predictors explained 54.8% of the
variance (R2 = 0.55, F(6,70) = 14.123, p < 0.001) in brand attachment. We found that customer citi-
zen helping others significantly predicted brand attachment (β = 0.433, p < 0.001), as does customer
citizen helping the company (β = −0.399, p < 0.001). Customer orientation (β = 0.190, p < 0.05), prod-
uct and service quality (β = 0.226, p < 0.01), customer citizen helping others (β = 0.252, p < 0.01), and
customer citizen helping the company (β = 0.165, p < 0.05) (R2 = 0.82, F(6,70) = 14.123, p < .001) (see
Table 4) are significant in predicting brand loyalty.
Table 2. Summary of multi-regression analysis (N=119) for Tesla
*p<0.05.
**p<0.01.
***p<0.001.
Variable BStd. error β t B Std. error β t
(Constant) −0.573 1.471 −0.389 −2.138 0.672 −3.181
Reliable and financially −0.140 0.258 −.103 −0.544 0.221 0.122 0.175 1.822
Customer orientation −0.261 0.190 −.243 −1.375 0.032 0.091 0.031 0.357
Product and service quality 0.087 0.186 0.080 0.470 0.428 0.088 0.415*** 4.858
Customer citizen helping
others
0.475 0.220 0.426* 2.166 0.185 0.105 0.173 1.755
Customer citizen helping
the company
0.709 0.285 0.280* 2.493 0.392 0.134 0.163** 2.917
Social and environmental
responsibility
0.025 0.117 0.023 0.211 0.118 0.055 0.121* 2.142
R
2
0.227 0.798
Dependent variable Brand attachment Brand loyalty
Table 3. Summary of multi-regression analysis (N=103) for Volvo
*p<0.05.
**p<0.01.
Variable BStd. error β t B Std. error β t
(Constant) 0.621 0.675 0.921 −0.767 0.370 −2.076
Reliable and financially −0.123 0.228 −0.099 −0.541 0.188 0.124 0.155 1.511
Customer orientation −0.084 0.176 −0.080 −0.480 0.197 0.096 0.190* 2.051
Product and service quality 0.154 0.192 0.147 0.800 0.233 0.103 0.226** 2.253
Customer citizen helping
others
0.438 0.179 0.373** 2.443 0.289 0.097 0.252** 2.968
Customer citizen helping
the company
0.351 0.117 0.370** 3.006 0.152 0.063 0.165* 2.418
Social and environmental
responsibility
−0.011 0.120 −.013 −0.090 0.074 0.065 0.090 1.143
R
2
0.358 0.789
Dependent variable Brand attachment Brand loyalty
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5. Conclusions and implications
The aim of the current study is to analyze the eect of corporate brand reputation on brand attach-
ment and brand loyalty considering the automotive sector. Data collected in online brand communi-
ties of owners of three car brands (Tesla, Volvo, and Toyota) allow us to understand that brand
reputation tends to be more eective in enhancing brand loyalty than brand attachment. Only the
dimensions of customer citizen helping others and customer citizen helping the company (Groth,
2005) exercise a positive and significant influence on brand attachment. This finding highlights the
importance of interactions in establishing and developing emotional bonds.
Particularly, customers enjoy interacting with each other, talking about the brand, their products/
services, and explaining to other customers some knowledge they don’t have about products/ser-
vices. Customers also do not mind providing helpful feedback to customer services or inform the
company about the live experience with the products/services. Therefore, more than reliability of the
car or perceived quality of the same, customers need to be involved with the car characteristics and
share it with others to be attached to a certain car brand.
When considering brand loyalty, other dimensions of brand reputation emerge as significant. For
Toyota, all six dimensions have significant eects on brand loyalty. Customers give particular impor-
tance to customer–customer or customer–company interactions and appreciate the product and
service quality. In fact, Toyota has a huge reputation in what concerns the quality of its products. For
Volvo brand, the dimensions of reliable and financially and social and environmental responsibility
are not significant to influence brand loyalty. For Tesla, product and service quality and the interac-
tions with customer–company are the most important to enhance brand loyalty. The dimension reli-
able and financially is only important to Toyota brand. Therefore, H1 and H2 are partially
supported.
The reason for such findings may lie in the way customers see the brands. Toyota and Volvo are
more concerned about communicating the reliability of the cars (in the case of Toyota) and vehicle
safety (Volvo) than Tesla. Tesla Motors is the only one of the three brands founded in the twenty-first
century. Therefore, they do not have yet a tradition on communicating brand reputation in a way
others do.
Table 4. Summary of multi-regression analysis (N=105) for Toyota
*p<0.05.
**p<0.01.
***p<0.001.
Variable BStd. error β t B Std. error β t
(Constant) −0.799 0.762 −1.049 −0.939 0.209 −4.485
Reliable and financially 0.074 0.191 0.052 0.389 0.208 0.068 0.168** 3.061
Customer orientation −0.056 0.144 −.044 −0.391 0.178 0.052 0.167** 3.451
Product and service
quality
0.039 0.171 0.030 0.226 0.253 0.055 0.240*** 4.572
Customer citizen helping
others
0.649 0.165 0.437*** 3.935 0.314 0.053 0.276*** 5.903
Customer citizen helping
the company
0.348 0.092 0.399*** 3.776 0.125 0.033 0.128** 3.766
Social and environmental
responsibility
−0.059 0.111 −.062 −0.529 0.089 0.035 0.104* 2.569
R
2
0.548 0.820
Dependent variable Brand attachment Brand loyalty
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The quality of the direct interaction between the company and the customers becomes very impor-
tant in creating reputation about a car brand. Product and service quality become one of the most
important dimensions of brand reputation to contribute to loyalty. This dimension deals with oering
high-quality products and services, stands behind the services that company oers, and develops in-
novative services. The last contribution comes from social and environmental Responsibility. This is
noticeable since the three car brands are committed to social and environmental issues, but customers
tend to mostly value the quality of the relationship and the quality and innovation of goods/services.
This bond between a car brand and customers (Belk, 1988; Loureiro & Kaufmann, 2016; Park et al.,
2010) represents more than positive emotions and feelings; it is about to share the same “soul.”
Following Park et al. (2010), this happens when the connections between the brand and the cus-
tomer self become close and also when brand-related thoughts and memories become more promi-
nent. Therefore, the way customers evaluate the “truth” of a car brand, or even the more the
evaluation of genuinity of the car as a product of the identity system of the car brand, the greater
the attachment between the car and the customer. Tesla seems to be more eective in transferring
the essence of the brand to the product (car). The reason could lie in the fact that Tesla has its pro-
duction located in the same country and place as its origin(United States of America). The other two
brands (Toyota and Volvo) relocated the production of some car models to other countries. According
to what was possible to get from participants of this research, customers are informed of this situa-
tion and so could have a perception of a lack of essence of the brand in the products. In this last
case, the reputation of a brand can gain relief to attract customers.
The findings of this study could be important for those who manage car brands. A brand like Tesla
should focus more on the originality and the essence of the brand to involve customers on attach-
ment bonds. The brands with a long-term relationship with customers should reinforce such rela-
tionship providing more interactions and new experiences with them.
As any other research, the current one has limitations that could be inspirations for further re-
search. First, other car brands could be considered to get a better understanding this phenomenon.
Second, future research could also consider the corporate reputation dimension of good employer
proposed by Walsh and Beatty (2007). Third, it will be interesting to explore how the authenticity and
attachment could influence brand equity. Finally, it will also be interesting to analyze the model re-
garding situations when relationships between car brands and customers are problematic.
Funding
This work was supported by FCT- Foundation for Science
and Technology [grant number UID/GES/00315/2013].
Author details
Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro
1
E-mail: sandramloureiro@netcabo.pt
Eduardo Moraes Sarmento
2
E-mail: emoraessarmento@gmail.com
Goulwen Le Bellego
1
E-mail: goulwenlebellego@gmail.com
1
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Business
Research Unit (BRU/UNIDE), Av. Forças Armadas, 1649-026
Lisbon, Portugal.
2
Lisbon School of Economics & Management, Lisbon
University (ISEG), ULHT and ESHTE, Lisbon, Portugal.
Citation information
Cite this article as: The eect of corporate brand reputation
on brand attachment and brand loyalty: Automobile
sector, Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro, Eduardo Moraes
Sarmento & Goulwen Le Bellego, Cogent Business &
Management(2017), 4: 1360031.
Cover image
Source: Author.
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... Studies have highlighted and extensively stressed the positive effects of consumer-perceived brand innovation (Pappu & Quester, 2016), brand participation (Leckie et al., 2016), and brand value (Yeh et al., 2016) on brand loyalty. In addition, customer satisfaction (Hew et al., 2016), consumer-perceived corporate reputation (Loureiro et al., 2017), and social media marketing (Ismail, 2017) could improve, shape, or significantly impact brand loyalty. ...
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