The impact of relational drivers on customer brand engagement and brand outcomes

This study investigates the effects of customers’ trust and satisfaction with the focal brand and brand identification (self-expressive brand) on customer brand engagement (CBE) dimensions (cognitive processing, affection and activation), which can promote brand outcomes (brand evangelism and repurchase intention). The model was tested using survey data from 466 Australian consumers of mobile phone brands. The results suggest that brand trust enhances affection, followed by cognitive processing, but not activation. Brand satisfaction has a stronger impact on activation than affection while it is not related to cognitive processing. Self-expressive brand has the largest impact on cognitive processing, followed by affection and then activation. CBE dimensions are found to influence brand outcomes (brand evangelism and repurchase intention). For marketing theorists, to our knowledge, this is the first study to empirically examine the differential impact of relational drivers on brand evangelism and repurchase intention via the CBE dimensions. For managers, given that brand trust and brand satisfaction are customer-based metrics often tracked by organisations, our findings help organisations to redirect their efforts to the specific relational drivers that influence either psychological and/or behavioural components of CBE as well as brand evangelism and repurchase intention.