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.