Fostering brand love in Facebook brand pages

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze how brand love is built in the context of brand pages by proposing a model in which brand love depends on relationships ties with other brand consumers (sense of brand community) and with the brand itself (self–brand connection). Design/methodology/approach: Information was collected from a sample of 559 members of the community of a well-known baby food brand on Facebook. Data were collected through an online questionnaire sent by the company. Findings: Results suggest that both sense of brand community and self–brand connection foster brand love and that self–brand connection exerts a mediating role between sense of brand community and brand love. Furthermore, the effect of brand community on brand love is conditioned by a personal trait of individuals such as brand engagement in self-concept. In addition, this study identifies a new consequence of brand love not previously analyzed in the literature: brand equity. Research limitations/implications: A potential shortcoming is the product category analyzed and that the length of membership was not controlled and it may be a moderator between participation and community consequences. Practical implications: The key implications are the importance of nurturing relationship ties among brand users and building self–brand connections on brand pages as precursors of brand love. Originality/value: The study offers empirical evidence about the mechanism through which brand love is formed on social-media platforms such as Facebook. Furthermore, the authors have demonstrated the relationship between brand love and brand equity, which had not been examined yet in the literature.