Strong Brands, Strong Relationships

Introduction: Strengthening our Understanding of the Importance of Brands to Consumers, Firms, and Society at Large

Part I: How Contexts Shape Brand Meaning
1. Loyalty and Brands in Consumers’ Assembled Lives
2. Framing the Game: How Brands’ Relationships with Their Competitors Affect Consumer Preference
3. The Role of Cultural Capital in Creating “Glocal” Brand Relationships

Part II: Brands, Identities, and Self-Expression
4. Boys Will Be Brands: Exploring Male Consumer-Brand Relationships
5. Brand Relationships and Self-Identity: Consumer Use of Celebrity Meaning to Repair a Compromised Identity
6. How Lonely Consumers Relate to Brands: Insights from Psychological and Marketing Research
7. Identity Degrading Brands

Part III: Humanizing and Anthropomorphizing Brands
8. Befriending Mr. Clean: The Role of Anthropomorphism in Consumer-Brand Relationships
9. Anthropomorphism and Consumer-Brand Relationships: A Cross-Cultural Analysis
10. The Post-Human Future of Brands

Part IV: #BrandsOnline
11. From Stranger to Friend: Shaping Consumer-Brand Relationships with Social Media
12. How Social Media Influencers Build a Brand Following by Sharing Secrets
13. Customer-to-Customer Relationship Management (CCRM): How Marketers Can Successfully Engage Consumers Online

Part V: Relationship Threats and Endings
14. The Unfaithful Brand: When Flirting with New Customer Segments, Make Sure You Are Not Already Married
15. Dyads, Triads and Consumer Treachery: When Interpersonal Connections Guard Against Brand Cheating
16. This Brand Is Just Not That into You: Exploring the Role of Firm Integrity in How Consumers React to Customer Firing
17. Communitas Interruptus: Consumer Experiences of Leaving Community
18. Consumers’ Experience of Brand Withdrawal: Unfolding Consumption Bereavement Theory

Part VI: Building the Brand-Driven Organization
19. Building Brands from the Inside Out: Three Practitioner Stories
20. Branding Terror: Building Notoriety in Violent Extremist Organizations
21. Identity Tensions in Business-Based Brand Relationships
22. Success Factors for the Implementation of an Intended Brand Personality: Conceptual Framework and Insights from the Swiss Luxury Industry

Part VII: Systems and Metrics for Measuring Brand Relationships
23. Secret Relationships: Uncovering Consumers’ Hidden Feelings about Brands
24. Using Relationship Metaphors to Understand and Track Brands
25. Constructing Consumer-Brand Relationships to Better Market and Build Businesses

Part VIII: The Futures of Branding
26. Contemplating the Futures of Branding