The Negative Effect of Brand Attachment: How Attachment Styles Help Explain Anti-Brand Behavior

Abstract

Enterprises tend to attach importance to consumer brand relationship in the marketing context, especially the establishment and culture of attachment relationship, and they try to maintain brand loyalty through consumers’ high self-connection. But they ignore the possibility that brand attachment leads to anti-brand behavior; however, previous study was less involved in the negative effects of brand attachment and negative brand behavior. So on the basis of relevant research literature review, we firstly illustrate two kinds of incentive of anti-brand behavior: 1) the loss of functional benefit; 2) the violation of self-concept, and then discussed the theoretical framework that brand attachment leads to anti-brand behavior from the perspective of consumers’ individual characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to explore the strong brand attachment relationship between consumers and brand when and why it will be transformed into a strong negative brand behavior, and thus provide a new perspective on the study of brand attachment.