Consumer-Retailer Emotional Attachment: Some Antecedents and Personality Moderators

Since loyalty in services remains elusive and unpredictable, there is need to study consumer relationships with firms apart from the established satisfaction-loyalty chain approach. To that end, the present paper focuses on feelings of attachment and love and investigates through two empirical consumer studies, in two different grocery retailer brands, (a) emotional attachment effects on re-patronage intentions, (b) predictors of emotional attachment and, (c) moderating effects of consumer traits’ on the (a) relationship presented above. The findings imply that perceived transactional value, retail store image and corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations determine consumer-retailer emotional attachment levels. Furthermore, we find that for consumers scoring low on the social value of warm relationships with others, and for consumers characterized by an avoidant attachment style, the effect of emotional attachment on re-patronage intentions is less salient. Interestingly, in the case of high avoidant individuals the effect is negative. Direct managerial implications for effectively manipulating consumer-firm emotional attachment in the context of grocery retailing as well as future research perspectives are provided at the end.