Consumer-retailer love and attachment: Antecedents and personality moderators

Because loyalty to services remains elusive and unpredictable, there is a need to study consumer relationships with firms apart from the established satisfaction-loyalty chain approach. To that end, the present paper investigates feelings of attachment and love through two empirical consumer studies of two different grocery retailer brands. The findings of the current study imply that retail store image, perceived transactional value, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations positively influence consumer-retailer love levels. Furthermore, we find that for consumers scoring low on the value of warm relationships with others and for consumers characterized by an avoidant attachment style, the effect of consumer-retailer love on re-patronage intentions is less salient. Interestingly, in the case of highly avoidant individuals, the effect of consumer-retailer love is negative. Managerial implications for building consumer-firm love in the context of grocery retail, as well as future research perspectives, are provided at the end of the paper. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.