Brand Attachment and Management of a Strategic Brand Exemplar

Abstract

This chapter examines three key issues in developing and establishing strong brand relationships with its customers. The first issue addresses the concept of attachment as a distinctive higher order construct that bears critical implications for the enhancement of brand equity. The second key issue addresses how a brand may be able to create a meaningful personal connection with its customers in order to create and establish brand attachment. Here, three different brand-self associations are introduced. The third and final issue addresses the importance of the strategic brand exemplar as the most fundamental tool that offers a firm valuable opportunity for the brand's sustainable competitive advantages and growth. The essential requirement for this opportunity to be realized is the firm's strategic choice of a brand's exemplar and the carefully executed strategy to manage the exemplar over time so as to nurture and accumulate its effects.

Keywords: brand attachment, strategic brand exemplar