روانشناسی مصرف کننده از روابط نام تجاری - مشتری : توسعه مدل رابطه ای AA

The Attachment-Aversion (AA) Relationships model offers a unifying model of customer-brand relationships. To develop it further as a relevant consumer-psychology model, future research should examine three key factors: how brand perception differ from person perceptions; what role brand experiences play as determinants of customer-brand relationships, and how the AA Relationships model fits with other brand frameworks. The author offers insights and suggestions on how to address these three tasks.

Developing a comprehensive theory and a broader perspective that ties together various micro-theories and empirical findings is always welcome. In the area of branding such an approach is of particular importance. Concepts have proliferated and hundreds of empirical research studies have been conducted. However, too often, research on branding has been piecemeal and narrowly focused. Unifying models on the consumer psychology of brands have been largely missing (Schmitt, 2012). The Attachment–Aversion (AA) Relationship model, presented by Park, Eisingerich, and Park (2013), provides an integrative model focused on brand relationship. Park et al. (2013) review prior research and present new constructs to broaden our understanding of customer–brand relationships. The model describes and explains approach and avoidance relations that customers have with brands, covering the full range of relationship valence and salience. It represents relationship valance based on brand-self distance including both positive and negative relations. It represents relationship salience based on brand prominence—the perceived accessibility of brand memories. Empirically, Park et al. (2013) show that their construct differs on several outcome measures from established customer–brand relationship constructs and measures such as brand attachment, emotional valence and brand attitude strength. In addition, they identify self-related determinants of the AA relationships and include motivational strength as a key process construct in the model. The AA Relationship model is a valuable and innovative step forward toward conceptualizing customer–brand relationships in a comprehensive way. The model is about internal constructs and processes—perceptions and feelings, relations and inter-relations in a cognitive-affective “self system”—and as such thoroughly psychological in nature. It draws on the similarities of person and brand perception, using pertinent concepts from psychology in a consumer context. To further develop the model, future research also needs to consider how brand perceptions differ from person perceptions and how marketing activities affect brand relations. Moreover, the AA Relationship model should be integrated more closely with other brand models that exist in marketing and consumer research. In doing so, the model would focus more specifically on the consumer psychology of brands and be more relevant to consumer researchers and marketers than the current largely psychologically focused model (see Fig. 1).

Park et al. (2013) have presented the AA Relationship model as a “unifying conceptual model of customer–brand relationships” (p. 3). Specifying and conceptualizing, as well as empirically testing, how brand relations differ from personal relations, how the brand experience is related to customer–brand relationships, and how the AA Relationship model can benefit from and contribute to other brand frameworks, will further advance the model and branding theory within the field of consumer psychology. It will also turn the current largely psychologically based AA Relationship model into a genuine consumer psychology model.