Brand Engagement and Brand Loyalty

Marketers value and seek brand loyalty. Consequently, they have developed a variety of strategies to encourage both behavioral (repeat purchase) and attitudinal (emotional) loyalty among customers. A recent concept has emerged related to the latter goal: brand engagement. Although marketers give a variety of definitions for brand engagement, the essential concept is an emotional attachment to a brand as though the customer has an emotional relationship with it perhaps because the brand acts as an important reflection of self-identity or is an important symbol of something meaningful to the consumer. Consumers manifest different types of engagement (with advertising, media, web sites, a company, as well as specific brands). Engagement is also conceptualized at different levels of abstraction: engagement with the marketplace, engagement with a product category, engagement with a specific brand, and brand engagement in self-concept, which refers to differences in how much consumer use brands in general to represent themselves to others. This chapter discusses these issues in some detail and presents theoretical, managerial, and theoretical implications of this concept.