Influence of Brand Love on Hedonic and Utilitarian Product Consumption in Emerging Markets

Abstract

This research focuses on the antecedents and consequences of brand love and adapts the conceptual model with a priori set of variables from the literature for testing the effect of brand love on both hedonic and utilitarian product categories along with its impact on consumers from emerging market. It concentrates on the dimensions of brand love and the ways in which brand love influences consumer behaviour based on gender. For conducting research, the responses from 132 Indian consumers were gathered. The respondents were asked to mention their favorite luxury watch brand and toothpaste brand. The luxury watch brand symbolized hedonic product category, and the toothpaste brand represented utilitarian product category. The hypotheses were then tested by using Chi-square. The gender-wise difference was tested for both hedonic and utilitarian product categories using independent sample T-tests. The findings revealed that brand love for hedonic product is significantly different for both male and female consumers, thus indicating vital managerial inference towards the adaption of appropriate promotional method that is based on the concept of brand love in relation to gender. Further, the study on the application of the concept of brand love to Indian context is a new idea, thereby keeping into consideration both hedonic and utilitarian consumption. Furthermore, Indian luxury consumers have been rarely taken into consideration in the existing marketing literature, thus contributing to the emerging market research.