The relationship between brand love and actual brand performance: evidence from an international study

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the different relationship that brand love,compared to brand attitude, has with actual brand performance in a cross-national and cross category context.Design/methodology/approach: An empirical study is conducted in the US, Russia and Indonesiato develop and validate a short but comprehensive measure of brand love. A brand attitude measure derived from company’s tracking studies and behavioural measures derived from panel data areused to examine the different relationship of brand love and brand attitude with brand performance.Findings: The findings show that consumers in the US, Russia and Indonesia share a simila rconcept of brand love. They also show that brand love, compared to brand attitude, is more strongly related with growth in behavioural loyalty, whereas brand attitude, compared to brand love, is morestrongly related to the brand size in the present.Research limitations/implications: The paper combines psychological and behavioural data from different sources. Future research may collect both types of data from the same sample ofconsumers. Besides, the paper uses brand love and brand attitude data related to loyal consumersand users, respectively. Future research may consider both types of consumers simultaneously.Practical implications: The paper clarifies why brand love measures should be integrated in acompany’s brand measurement system, and their specific contribution compared to brand attitude.Originality/value: 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 versus brand attitude with actual brand performance using company/industry-derived data.