Customers and brands – strengthening the relationship
Richard Brookes Department of Marketing, The University of Auckland, New Zealand
Kirsti Lindberg-Repo Hanken Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland
INTRODUCTION
Successful brand management requires an understanding of the strength of a consumer's relationship with those brands they consider to be of some 'meaning' to them. Marketers know that some brands evoke extremely high relational aspects and therefore care is needed for, as Advertising Age(2005) said: “We have just two words for any marketer toying with the idea of updating a venerable, iconic, brand: New Coke”. This...