Winning Hearts over Minds: The Love between Customers and Brands!

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Strong customer-brand relationships matter. The modern consumers not only have a high expectations when it comes to a product, pricing and service but more importantly they want to engage with brands and form a relationship. Studies show that consumers often treat brands as relationship partners in much the same way that they treat each other in an interpersonal context.

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Loyal customers customers are a primary driver of repeat business

Being attracted to certain brand is one thing but being emotionally attached takes the customer- brand relationship on a different, more significant level as such an emotional bond is positively associated with brand loyalty. What differentiate loyal customers from just customers is that they are a primary driver of repeat business.

Loyal customers are much more likely to recommend, purchase and revisit the brand, while at the same time they are resilient to negative information and often defend the brand from negative criticism.

From the psychological perspective the attachment theory, which is one of the most well researched theoretical frameworks in the field of relational psychology, can shed a light on how and why consumers form emotional connections to brands.

Why emotional nurturing nurturing matters

One of the basic human needs is the desire to form strong emotional attachments to particular others. Think of love.  The definition of love is a complex one however, in its simplest form, can be defined as an emotional bond that breeds feeling of strong or constant affection for a person.

According to the attachment theory, based on the joint work of the psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, people are pre-programmed to form emotional attachment to other people.

This process begins in infancy when an attachment is formed with the primary care giver, and continues through the adult stage with romantic relationships. In a nutshell, infants were observed how they respond to stress when mother leaves the room and then infant's ability to calm down and continue exploring. Three attachment styles emerged from the experiment: secure, anxious, and avoidant style.

Romantic bonds

The emotional bond that develops between romantic partners is based on the same motivational system that gives rise to the bond between infant and caregiver.  That being said, our early relationships with a primary caregiver, most commonly a parent, creates our expectation for how love should be.

“Almost everyone falls into one of the three categories: secure, anxious, or avoidant. About 20 percent of people are anxious, roughly 25 percent fall into the avoidant camp, and the remainder are considered secure” - The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In a romantic love we experience a deep emotional connection when we feel that our partner cares about us and makes sure that our needs are satisfied. So the more our needs are satisfied, the more we love that person and the more we express our loyalty and commitment to them.

The attachment styles

There are certain traits that describe each attachment style:

Secure - Low on avoidance, low on anxiety, interdependent: willing to rely or depend on the partner and able to be emotionally close to the partner, don’t fear rejection and respond well to their partner needs.

Anxious - Low on avoidance, high on anxiety. Crave closeness and intimacy, want to be emotionally close yet feel insecure about the relationship. Worried about being abandoned. Dislike being alone or single.

Avoidant - High on avoidance, high on anxiety. Self-sufficient, often uncomfortable with intimacy and primarily value independence and freedom. Finding it difficult to foster interdependence and commitment.

From romantic to brand relationships, style matters…

This being said, the emotional attachment can extend beyond the context of interpersonal relationships, such as the romantic love. The commercial relationships behave in similar ways to personal relationships. In essence, consumers develop attachments, both cognitive and emotional, to brands that can be counted on to fulfil their needs. All of these attachment styles can influence the consumer behaviour and help explain why consumers prefer certain brands.

“Brand love is the degree of passionate emotional attachment that a

satisfied consumer has for a particular brand name” (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006).

Several psychological studies conclude that attachment styles predict consumers' reactions to brands and recent research focuses on classifying consumers based on two dimension of avoidance and anxiety. Study results show that anxious attachment style people prefer sincere brand personality and tend to be attached with it, while avoidant attachment style people have stronger relationship with exciting brand personality.

“Anxious attachment style people prefer sincere brands and are not likely to respond to any changes in brand personality. They hope for a secure and lasting relationship. For this reason, they are attached to a single particular brand of their preferred personality. When they like a brand, they tend to form a relationship with it.

On the other hand, avoidant attachment style people have a stronger relationship with exciting brands but are not likely to be attached to it. They are more brand sensitive. The change in a brand’s personality may cause their behaviour towards the brand to change as well. They also do not invest much emotion in relationships. For this reason, they might prefer a particular brand over another but they are not likely to be attached to it so will try new brands in the market. Hence, they are not likely to be attached to a particular brand.” (Swaminathal et al 2009).

With growing competition for customers, building relationships based on emotional connectedness is what can take a brand ahead of the game. Seeking to understand customer attachment style can help you select and invest in relationships with right customers, those who believe in your products or services, while at the same eliminate investing in short lived customers.