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The voice of lonely
consumers
The mediating role of brand attachment between emotional
loneliness and brand loyalty
BACHELOR THESIS WITHIN: Business Administration NUMBER OF CREDITS: 15 credits
PROGRAMME OF STUDY: Marketing Management AUTHOR: Zhehao Liu
Yuan Qi JÖNKÖPING: May 2021
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Title: The voice of lonely consumers: the mediating role of brand attachment between
emotional loneliness and brand loyalty
Authors: Zhehao Liu
Yuan Qi
Tutor: Hossain Shahriar Date: 2021-05-22
Key terms: Brand attachment, brand loyalty, emotional loneliness, brand anthropomorphism.
Abstract
Brand attachment and brand loyalty are critical notions regarding consumer-brand
relationship. Although loneliness has become a common phenomenon, the process of lonely people building relationships with brands is still needed to be demystified. This paper explores consumers’ coping with loneliness through the brand attachment further developed into the attitudinal and behavioural brand loyalty towards the brand. The authors conducted a quantitative analysis, and in total of 241 participants were investigated through an online survey. The results show that there is a positive effect of emotional loneliness on brand attachment. Furthermore, brand attachment plays a total mediating role in the positive relationships from emotional loneliness to both attitudinal and behavioural brand loyalty.
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1. INTRODUCTION ... 1
1.1BACKGROUND ... 1
1.2PROBLEM FORMULATION ... 2
1.3THE PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH ... 3
1.4RESEARCH QUESTIONS ... 4
1.5DELIMITATIONS TO THE RESEARCH... 4
1.6KEY TERMS ... 4
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ... 6
2.1LONELINESS ... 6
2.1.1 loneliness ... 6
2.1.2 The structure of loneliness ... 7
2.1.3 Emotional Loneliness ... 7
2.1.4 Emotional loneliness and Attachment ... 8
2.2INTERPERSONAL THEORY ... 8
2.2.1 Attachment theory ... 8
2.2.2 Need to belong theory ... 9
2.3BRAND ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND CONSUMER-BRAND RELATIONSHIP ... 9
2.3.1 Brand anthropomorphism ... 10
2.3.2 Consumer-brand relationship ... 10
2.4BRAND ATTACHMENT ... 11
2.4.1 Brand attachment definition ... 11
2.4.2 Importance and effect of Brand attachment ... 11
2.4.3 Brand attachment connect with attachment theory ... 12
2.5.BRAND LOYALTY ... 13
2.5.1 Brand loyalty and its importance in marketing ... 13
2.5.2 Two dimensions: Attitudinal and behavioural loyalty ... 13
2.5.3 Attachment and brand loyalty ... 14
3. METHODOLOGY ... 16 3.1RESEARCH DESIGN ... 16 3.1.1 Research philosophy ... 16 3.1.2 Research approach ... 17 3.2RESEARCH METHOD ... 18 3.2.1 Data collection ... 18
3.2.2 Survey design and measurement ... 18
3.2.3 Sampling method ... 19
3.2.4 Data analysis method ... 20
3.3ETHICAL CONSIDERATION ... 21
4. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS ... 23
4.1DEMOGRAPHICS ANALYSIS ... 23 4.2DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS ... 24 4.3RELIABILITY STATISTICS ... 27 4.4CORRELATION ... 28 4.5BOOTSTRAP ANALYSIS ... 28 4.6MULTIGROUP ANALYSIS ... 30 4.7ANALYSIS ... 31 5. DISCUSSION ... 33
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5.3IMPLICATIONS ... 34
5.4LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH ... 35
REFERENCES ... 37
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1. Introduction
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Introductory part will present the basic background of this research and the formation process of research question. Next, the purpose of this study will be presented. Finally, a delimitation will be presented.
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1.1 Background
Along with the acceleration of the urbanization process and the high-speed development, China has been proved to be one of the fastest-growth economies over the past 30 years (Shao et al., 2018; Lou & Ulgiati, 2013). China's economy and society has undergone tremendous changes (Xin & Xin, 2016). The increase of China's GDP and Chinese people's disposable average income has brought a significant improvement in people's material life (Xin, Zhang, & Liu, 2010). However, with the successful development of the Chinese economy,
insufficient awareness of people's spiritual care has made them devoid of meaning in life (Yuan & Porr, 2014). In other words, Chinese people’s spiritual needs have not been fulfilled. Studies have shown that the spiritual needs of Chinese people are more focused on
relationships with others than in western societies (Chao et al., 2002). The connection with others is also called "social connectedness " (Chen et al., 2014). However, the social
connectedness of Chinese people has not simultaneously increased with material life in recent years. On the contrary, there is a steep fall in social connectedness that appeared in Chinese society (Liu & Xin, 2015). This lack of relationship with others and low degree of social connectedness leads to negative feelings such as loneliness (Lu et al., 2021; Xin & Xin, 2016; Chen et al., 2014; Kileen,1998; Perlam, 2004; Stilman et al.2009). Plenty of researchers have proved the ubiquity of loneliness a common in China (Zhu, Liu, Qu & Yi, 2018; Yang & Victor, 2008; Yang, Zhang & Wang, 2018; Xu & Chen, 2019). According to a study by Yang and Victor (2008), the number of Chinese people who felt lonely has increased from 16% of the total population in the year 1992 to around 30% in the year 2005. The same trend of increasing loneliness has been found in academic studies among the elderly (Yan et al., 2014) as well as the youth in China (Lau et al., 1999; Sun, Fu & Zheng, 2021).
In recent years, China has been regarded as a major commercial nation that has an enormous purchasing power (Kim & Zhao, 2014). The rapid rise of Chinese people's income gives them a chance to pursue a better quality of products or services, which brings out a great number of potential market opportunities to those multinational businesses that have brand influence (Kim & Zhao, 2014). With the fierce competition in China, it is significant for marketers to establish a stable and strong relationship between the brand and consumers (Kim & Zhao, 2014).
Branding is one of the key aspects for businesses to properly position their products
(Palmatier et al., 2017). Brand loyalty refers to a critical concept that is used to maintain the relationships between businesses and consumers, further obtaining competitive advantages in the specific industry (Palmatier et al., 2017). According to Loh et al. (2020), consumers who suffer emotional loneliness are likely to be solaced by their favourite brand within a short
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time. However, this feeling of loneliness will occur again after the solace is gone. The consumers, therefore, might seek psychological comfort from the brand repeatedly. As time passes, consumers develop an emotional attachment with the brand, leading to brand loyalty even if the feeling of loneliness is gone (Loh et al., 2020). Eventually, relationships are established between consumers and brands, which are the same as the relationships in a social context (Fournier, 1998). Thus, marketers can benefit by fulfilling consumers' craving for such attachments and relationships.
1.2 Problem formulation
Human beings are social creatures and always need to establish social relations with others (Stilman et al., 2009). Loneliness can occur when there is a gap between actual social relationships and expectations. (Kileen,1998; Perlam, 2004). The research on loneliness is mostly confined to the field of psychology (e.g., Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008; Cacioppo et al., 2015; Ernst & Cacioppo, 1999) and sociology (e.g., Golden et al., 2009; Caplan, 2006; Wheeler et al., 1983; Wittenberg &Reis, 1986). In psychological research on loneliness, taxonomy has been proposed, which divides loneliness into two types according to different causes, emotional loneliness and social loneliness (Weiss, 1973). It has been proved in the field of medical psychology that loneliness has a great risk to damage people's health, on physical (e.g., Pressman et al., 2005) and psychological (e.g., Kearns et al., 201; Cacioppo et al., 2010) aspects. In the field of sociology, many studies on loneliness are based on
psychological theories to explore and study the social behaviour changes due to loneliness, such as the need to belong theory (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) is applied (Reichl et al., 2013; Mellor et al., 2008) and attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) is applied (DiTommaso et al., 2003; Goossens et al., 1998; Erozkan, 2001). This suggests that loneliness significantly alters interpersonal behaviour, but there are not many studies on whether loneliness can affect people's attitude towards brands. There is a lack of attention and research on lonely people in the existing market literature (Wang et al., 2021). And there were few loneliness related research has explored brands and the relationship between consumers and brands (Loh et al., 2020).
Branding is one of the most important concepts in business and has become a top business priority since it can bring great business potential and profit to the enterprise (Murphy, 1992; Rooney, 1995; Fan, 2010; Clifton, 2009; Fan, 2006; Keller & Lehmann 2006). A successful brand should establish a good relationship between the brand and consumers (Veloutsou, 2007). In this context, many brand researchers agree that brand anthropomorphisms can give brand human characteristics and establish an emotional connection with people (MacInnis & Folkes, 2017; Guido & Peluso, 2015; Aggarwal & McGill, 2007). The researchers used imported psychological concepts, such as need to belong theory (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) and attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969), to study the emotional bonds that consumers form with brands (Sicilia et al., 2016) and to explore how these bonds are deepened into brand attachment (Guèvremont & Grohmann, 2016) and brand loyalty (Fournier & Yao, 1997). Brand attachment and brand loyalty are both important concepts when describing the emotional relationship between brands and consumers (Belaid & Behi, 2011; Japutra et al., 2014; Thomson et al., 2005; Park et al., 2010; Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001; Russell-Bennett et al., 2013). Brand attachment is a positive and significant emotional bond that exists
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between a brand and consumers (Park et al., 2010; Thomson et al., 2005). Existing research shows that brand attachment leads consumers to form a deeper and closer emotional
connection with the brand, that is, brand loyalty (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001; Vlachos et al. 2010; Loureiro et al., 2012). Deposit academics and practitioners have contributed
significantly to the concept of brand attachment and brand loyalty, and only a little attention was paid to lonely people.
The existing literature, which is focused on the relationship between lonely people and brand, has been studied in the following aspects: the influence of ostracism on the relationship between loneliness and brand (Long et al., 2014); coping with loneliness through self-brand connection and brand community (Snyder & Newman, 2019); the role of materialism, self‐ brand connections and nostalgia in the relationship between loneliness and brand loyalty (Loh et al., 2020). There is a lack of research on the role of brands as "relationship partners" or emotional substitution to fill the emotional needs of lonely people. In the field of psychology, academics have defined that loneliness will affect the degree and type of interpersonal
attachment (Bernardon et al., 2011; DiTommaso et al., 2003; Bogaerts et al., 2006). However, there are hardly any studies that aim to demystify whether loneliness also affects the
establishment of brand attachment and the further formation of brand loyalty.
1.3 The purpose of the research
Considering the perniciousness and prevalence of loneliness, along with the significance of brand in the market, the purpose of this research is to explore the attitudes, perceptions, and connections of lonely consumers towards brands. This research aims to use the concept of brand anthropomorphism to explain the mechanism of the emotional bond between lonely people and brands. More precisely, the main objective of this research is to examine whether emotional loneliness will lead consumers to be more attached to a brand and further
investigating the role and function of brand attachment in the relationship between emotional loneliness and brand loyalty. In view of a long-term brand attachment will lead to brand loyalty, and brand loyalty could be divided into two types. The authors also aim to
differentiate the total effect of emotional loneliness along with the brand attachment on both attitudinal brand loyalty and behavioural brand loyalty (Japutra et al., 2018).
In addition to the theoretical contributions of this research, the authors also hope to provide empirical contributions. From a social perspective, this research is mainly aimed at arousing the attention of society to the lonely people community. In light of the huge population of lonely people worldwide and a series of negative effects of loneliness on people, the authors hope to urge others to take the collective responsibility of safeguarding such vulnerable people' as well as taking care of their physical and psychological health (Amarat et al., 2019). Explain it better, a series of harmful effects of loneliness such as low self-esteem, depression, or even suicide, should be considered by the marketers and meanwhile establishing their accountability of helping people to cope with loneliness through branding (Stravynski & Boyer, 2001; Hafner, 2016). To go a step further, marketers are expected to put more effort into developing the emotional bonds between the brand and consumers who are suffering loneliness, thereby fill in lonely consumers' absence of human relationships, which is conducive to create them a better quality of life (Kim & Zhao, 2014; Fournier, 1998).
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Further, since this research borrowed concepts from both psychological, sociology, and marketing realms, the authors hope to give marketers a better understanding of consumers who are experiencing loneliness and therefore help them efficiently manage the brand to fulfil the emotional needs of those consumers (Perlman, 1982). The authors also hope to provide marketers with theoretical bases which might guide them to better symbolize the brand and raise practitioners' attention on lonely people which are neglect segments. From a wider perspective, focusing on the consumers' emotional needs is vital for the customer-centric brand strategy, which will eventually benefit the stakeholders related to the brand. On the whole, there is a vision from the authors that all lonely people could be patiently treated and helped by others no matter from the perspective of social or commercial.
1.4 Research questions
In combination with the above existing research in psychology, sociology and related academic research on the brand, the question can be defined as: whether lonely people are more likely to form brand attachment (based on the experience of interpersonal theory), thus further forming brand loyalty. Whether brand attachment plays a mediating role in the formation of brand loyalty in lonely people.
So, we propose our research question:
How does brand attachment play a mediating role in terms of the indirect influence of emotional loneliness on brand loyalty?
1.5 Delimitations to the research
This study is limited to demystify the link between emotional loneliness and brand loyalty through brand attachment. Secondly, the subject variables are emotional loneliness, brand attachment, attitudinal brand loyalty, and behavioural brand loyalty. Thirdly, this study does not cover social loneliness and other concepts related to the consumer-brand relationship. Fourthly, the setting of this study will be in China, which means all primary data is gathered from Chinese respondents. Fifthly, this study adopts a quantitative research strategy. Next, Qualtrics and WJX are used to collect data. The data analysis is conducted through SPSS and Smart PLS. Correlation analysis and bootstrap analysis are applied for testing the hypotheses.
1.6 Key terms
Emotional loneliness: Emotional loneliness refers to the negative feelings when the gap
appears to an individual's actual relationship and expectations, especially when the intimacy is absent (Weiss, 1973).
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Brand anthropomorphism: The essence of brand anthropomorphism is to treat the brand as
a person, including limited personification with similar external characteristics to complete personification injecting people's perception, emotion and even soul (Epley et al., 2007).
Brand attachment: Brand attachment is defined as the close and positive emotional bonds
between the brand and consumers (Park et al., 2010).
Attitudinal brand loyalty: Attitudinal brand loyalty refers to a psychological allegiance that
could reflect consumers' commitment to purchasing towards a brand (Nam et al., 2011).
Behavioural brand loyalty: Behavioural brand loyalty is defined as consumers’ repeated
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2.
Literature Review
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This section will illustrate key concepts from previous literatures that include emotional loneliness, interpersonal theory, brand anthropomorphism, brand attachment, and brand loyalty. Hypotheses and conceptual models will also be proposed in this part.
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The authors conducted a systematic literature review mainly through two search engines which are Google Scholar and Primo. Numerous literature which related to the brand attachment, brand loyalty and so on, were chosen from the list of Association of Business Schools (ABS) to ensure the reliability and validity of the studies used. Besides that, this research involves knowledge borrowed from the field of psychology and sociology, for example, “Loneliness”, “Intimate relationship”, “Emotional bond”, etc. Therefore, authoritative databases such as Wiley, Elsevier, JSTOR, Sage, etc. were also used by the authors to search for literature in the field of psychology and sociology. Books that related to the topic have also been reviewed and few of the books were paid to get access. Moreover, the keywords chosen in this research are: “Loneliness”, “Consumer-brand relationships”, “Brand anthropomorphism”, “Brand attachment”, and “Brand loyalty”. Moreover, the authors limited the time span of the literature between 2000 to 2021 and used updated literatures to increase the quality of this research. However, a small number of journals and books published before 2000, which are critically important for the research, have also been used. In addition, the authors also rank the journals in descending order of published year and create a table to collect the literatures. “Author”, “Title”, “Year”, “Journal (publication institution)”,
“Keywords”, and “Methodology” of the journals and books could be seen in the appendix 3 and appendix 4.
2.1 Loneliness
2.1.1 loneliness
Loneliness is defined as the unpleasantness that is generated from the gaps or differences between the social relationships of an individual expected and the actual social relationship that an individual has (Kileen,1998; Perlam, 2004; Walton et al., 1991). Loneliness can be felt when the social need is not being met, or when an intimate relationship is absent. (Ernst & Cacioppo, 1999).
Loneliness is also an emotional response to being isolated by others in an involuntary or forced way (Larsen, 1990), namely the personal emotion when rejection or exclusion happens on an individual who desires to connect with society, or with the outside world (Perlman, 1982). From the perspective of biology and social psychology, human beings have to maintain a close connection with society, and if this fundamental need cannot be fulfilled, people will feel lonely (Stilman et al.2009).
Loneliness is a very common phenomenon in today's society. Thirty percent of the elderly in China feel lonely, and the higher the degree of loneliness, the worse their health is, directly or
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indirectly. (Yang & Victor, 2008). Loneliness is not limited to those with physical or mental disabilities, nor is it limited to the elderly who live alone (Cacioppo et al., 2015). Loneliness is also evident among young people with lots of friends, contacts, and even followers on social media (Qualter et al.,2015). Loneliness can occur in anyone's life cycle (Cacioppo et al., 2015). The personal objective psychological and physiological consequences of loneliness are obvious, for instance, low self-esteem (Jones et al, 1981), suicide or premature death (Hafner 2016), and depression (Cacioppo et al, 2006).
2.1.2 The structure of loneliness
Loneliness is a basic personal emotion with a complex structure (Hawkley et al., 2005). The intensity of loneliness is closely related to its formation and environment (Salimi, 2011). For example, the loneliness of a child who can't find a playmate is not the same as the loneliness of a child who has lost his mother (Heinrich & Gullone, 2006). However, according to Peplau & Perlman (1982), there are two generally accepted loneliness characteristics from empirical research on loneliness: 1. loneliness is an aversive experience of negative emotions along the same lines as anxiety and depression. 2. Loneliness is an individual perception when one's social connections are defective. An insufficient number of personal friends or social
connections may lead to quantitative deficiencies. The lack of intimacy in social relationships is the main reason for qualitative defects.
Although there is a general consensus on the characteristics of loneliness, there has been no consensus among academics on whether loneliness should be divided into different categories (Russell, 1982). Russell (1982) concludes that one idea is that all feelings of loneliness share a core and that different people experience different feelings of loneliness in common. Another perspective suggests that there are two or more different types of loneliness (Weiss, 1973).
2.1.3 Emotional Loneliness
So far, research related to loneliness in the business administration field mainly follows the loneliness typology proposed by Weiss in 1973. Weiss explains loneliness as two
symptomatological patterns, one is emotional loneliness, and the other is social loneliness. Although both types of loneliness share the same physical and psychological symptoms, such as stress, insomnia, restlessness, and depression, they differ in their causes, needs, and ways of coping.
According to Weiss (1973), Loneliness is a multi-dimensional emotion in which social loneliness is caused by the lack of an individual's social network. People, who feel social loneliness strongly, often need social connections to satisfy their lack of social networks. Social loneliness is likely more associated with symptoms of boredom, marginalization, depression, and a lack of meaning in life.
On the other hand, emotional loneliness is usually caused by the absence of close relationships or the loss of close attachments, which can only be alleviated by the establishment of new attachments or the restoration of close relationships. Emotional loneliness can lead to symptoms such as sensitivity, insecurity, anxiety, and feelings of abandonment (Weiss, 1973).
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Moreover, Weiss (1973) classified and summarized the possible loneliness relational provisions and concluded that there are six different types of relational provisions, namely attachment, sense of reliable alliance, reassurance of worth, nurturance, guidance in stressful situations, and social integrations. The individual has a great possibility to feel loneliness when one or more of the related provisions is missed. Among them, attachment is one of the main causes of emotional response (Weiss, 1973).
2.1.4 Emotional loneliness and Attachment
The notion that loneliness is due to a lack of attachment or interaction with people is widely held (e.g., Marangoni & Lckes, 1989; Margulis et al., 1984; de Jong Gierveld, 1998; Rook, 1988; Fees et al., 1999; Perlam & Peplau, 1981). Based on this concept, Liu et al. (2020) emphasized that the quality of social interaction is more significant than the frequency in terms of coping with loneliness. Consistent with the above views, recent research suggests that loneliness is a biological signal that indicates a lack of attachment and prompts
individuals to seek and build new attachments to get out of a depressed state (Cacioppo et al., 2006). For example, because of the difficulty and complexity of establishing new
attachments, many people are driven by loneliness to renew old friendships (Al-Saggaf & Nielsen, 2014).
The early psychologist and sociologist' studies (e.g., Dykstra, 1993; Allan,1979; Peplau & Perlman, 1982; Littwak & Szelenyi, 1969) suggested that the different types of social relationships that loneliness lacked were different and not or hardly interchangeable. However, recent studies show that people can form interpersonal social relations with non-human agents through anthropomorphizing, such as pets, clothes and brands (Epley et al., 2008). Besides, as Lon stated in 2020, people who feel emotionally lonely (lack of intimacy) may turn to brands as relationship partners to cope with their loneliness.
2.2 Interpersonal theory
When researching loneliness, it is critical to consider interpersonal relationships (Fung et al., 2019). Both the Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) and the need to belong theory
(Baumeister & Leary, 1995) take loneliness into account and clearly explain interpersonal relationships.
2.2.1 Attachment theory
Attachment theory was first proposed by Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980), Although the theory was originally intended to explain the painful psychology of infants when they were separated from their parents. However, Bowlby (1980) believes that both babies and adults share
common human traits. Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980) explained attachment as the emotional tie between people that bring security, closeness, and happiness to both. Hazan and Shaver (1987) subsequently discussed attachment theory for the first time in dyadic adult
relationships and demonstrated that attachment in adult intimate relationships has a lot in common with infants with mothers. Until now, attachment theory has been widely applied to the study of adult intimate relationships (e.g., Kobak et al., 2007; Trinke & Bartholomew,
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1997; Hazan & Shaver, 1994; Sibley & Overall, 2008; Umemura et al., 2018; Overall et al., 2003).
In the field of psychology, the main typology related to attachment theory divides attachment into three different types, namely, parents, romantic partners (husband and wife or date), and close friends (Bartholomew, 1997). Different types of attachment have their unique
characteristics, and people need to establish attachment relationships to meet different emotional needs. Romantic attachments, for example, are maybe more exclusive and reliable than other types of attachments (Overall et al., 2003). The conceptualization of emotional loneliness suggests that the individual's existing attachment relationships fail to meet the individual's attachment needs (Weiss, 1973; Cacioppo et al., 2006). Therefore, this state of emotional deprivation leads people to seek new attachments and get out of the doleful mood (Rokach & Brock, 1998; Bouwman et al., 2017).
2.2.2
Need to belong theoryA need to belong is defined as a basic motive for humans, and the need to belong theory basically states that people tend to build and develop a positive and durable interpersonal relationship (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). The need to belong also has a connection with the needs for intimacy, which is one of the characteristics of a close relationship (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), and there is evidence that intimacy motivation level positively correlates with the degree of happiness that people enjoy (McAdams & Bryant, 1987).
According to Baumeister and Leary (1995), the need to belong could be directly turned from a person to anyone else, and the loss of a relationship with someone could be supplanted by any other. They also claim that the intimacy of a relationship with others needs to be gradually accumulated, which means interactions with strangers usually cannot provide people with belongingness. Additionally, the lack of belongingness sometimes makes people suffer loneliness, and general social relationships also prove ineffective concerning reducing the feeling of loneliness (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
2.3 Brand anthropomorphism and consumer-brand relationship
Unlike the previous sections, 2.1 and 2.2, which mainly focus on reviewing psychological literature that related to emotional loneliness and interpersonal theories. From this section, the authors will review literature from the field of brand management, marketing, and consumer research. The internal connections between consumers and brands would be explained in detail based on the existing theories and models.
According to Rokach (2011), all human beings have social attributes, which means people are incapable of surviving by themselves without any interaction. Moreover, the ‘need to belong’ theory also suggested that people should establish an enduring and considerable interpersonal relationship as a means to eliminate the feeling of loneliness (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). However, Baumeister and Leary (1995) also claimed the fact that social interactions among people are difficult to be achieved and fulfilled.
Based on the existing condition, branding specialists support the view that anthropomorphism helps consumers to build emotional connections with non-human beings, for example, brands
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(Aggarwal & McGill, 2007). Furthermore, previous research has categorized the approach of achieving brand anthropomorphism’s participation based on three distinctive views, which are human-focused, self-focused, and relationship-focused (MacInnis & Folkes, 2017). This research is mainly based on the relationship-focused viewpoint, which assumes that people establish brand relationships under a social circumstance. The relationship-focused
perspective provides a clear explanation of the transformation from consumer-brand
relationships to human relationships. Besides that, the brand attachment was also regarded as a type of consumer-brand relationship that caught consumer psychologists' interests
(MacInnis & Folkes, 2017).
2.3.1 Brand anthropomorphism
According to Portal et al. (2018), brands known by people as identification marks of an organization are capable of creating value for the organization, where brand
anthropomorphism contributes a lot to foster the process of creating such value.
Epley et al. (2007) stated that anthropomorphism occurs when the non-human entities are given those human attributions. Additionally, anthropomorphism shows up in the marketplace generally due to marketers' proposal of ascribing human characteristics to the brand, product design (Guido & Peluso, 2015), and commodity, or on account of consumers are willing to identify human attribution in the non-human (Aggarwal & McGill, 2012). For instance, an infinite variety of products have been regularly imbued with human characteristics to
distinguish them from others, to be memorable, to give certain qualities that clarify what they represent, and to improve their attractiveness to consumers (Aggarwal & McGill, 2012). Brown (2010) illustrated that, as a consequence of the revival of traditional and healthy values, consumers are progressively attracted to anthropomorphized brands, and they are fond of connecting to brands in a nearly identical manner they connect to people. A range of relevant studies has already found that the consequence of brands humanization has a positive social impact (Zhang et al., 2020), and imbuing human characteristic to a brand has been proved to be able to improve consumers' ability to identify the intrinsic values of the brand (Morhart et al., 2015). In general, brand anthropomorphism could be regarded as a reasonable result due to the importing of the notion of consumer-brand relationship within the field of consumer research (Bengtsson, 2003).
2.3.2 Consumer-brand relationship
According to Fritz et al., (2014), relationship marketing has been expanding at a rapid rate where the consumer-brand relationship is focused on by marketers due to its importance with respect to consumer commodities. They also stated that although the consumer-brand
relationship has its irreplaceable position within the marketing field, it has not become the main subject of major studies. Fournier's (1998) studies were regarded as the fundamental research, and she has developed 15 distinct types of relationships (e.g., "best friendship") between an individual consumer and brands (Fritz et al., 2014).
In the context of interpersonal relationships inspiration, Fournier (1998) claimed that consumers build tight relationships with brands in the same way they build human
relationships. She also argued that part of the consumers establishes close emotional bonds with brands, for example, the perception of being loved and attached. Those feelings are
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frequently experienced by consumers from someone who has intimate relationships with them, such as intimate friends, family members, and lovers (Fournier, 1998). Thus, emotional bonds between consumers and brands are formed, and hereby brands play the role of
relationship partners (Fournier, 1998). She also came up with a theoretical framework related to the consumer-brand relationships to emphasize brands act as the relationship partner, actively participating in their connection with consumers.
Interpersonal theory, for example, attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) and need to belong theory (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), could provide a clear explanation of consumer-brand relationships (Loh et al., 2020). Precisely, consumers who are in the absence of intimate relationships, namely the emotional lonely consumers (Weiss, 1973), are likely to be
motivated to search for a humanized brand to fulfil their needs of relationship partners (Loh et al., 2020).
2.4 Brand attachment
2.4.1 Brand attachment definition
Brand attachment is a close and positive relationship between consumers and brands (Park et al., 2010). Similar to the interpersonal relationship (Kleine & Baker, 2004), brand attachment is an individual's extension of 'self' from both emotional and cognitive perspectives. This extension can be between people, between people and property, and between people and brands (Belk, 1988).
Brand attachment is a prominence structure (Schmitt, 2012), which can reflect the strength of the bond between consumers and brands (Thomson et al., 2005). Recent studies show that brand attachment is a multi-dimensional structure composed of emotions, importance and self-connection, this model, also known as the three-factor model that described brand attachment from positive emotions (e.g., loved), passion or importance (e.g., passionate) and self-connection (e.g., bonded) (Japutraet al., 2014; Thomson et al., 2005). This
multi-dimensional structure of brand attachment is very similar to the structure of other brand-related concepts, such as brand attitude (Fedorikhin et al., 2008; Park et al., 2010). Coincidentally, Brand loyalty is also considered to be a very similar concept to brand attachment, but the two concepts have different structures (Japutraet al., 2014). To be more specific, brand loyalty and brand attachment are similar in emotional dimension but different in passion and self-connection (Fournier, 1998).
2.4.2 Importance and effect of Brand attachment
The research on the concept of brand attachment has gradually attracted the attention from practitioners and academic researchers in the field of marketing (Park and MacInnis, 2006; Schmalz & Orth, 2012; Fedorikhin et al., 2008; Thomson 2006; Chaplin & Roedder John, 2005; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995; Park et al., 2009; Park et al., 2010). Based on the concept of brand attachment, marketers can make better predictions and gain a clear understanding in terms of consumer behaviour and the consumer decision-making process (Park & MacInnis, 2006).
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The importance of brand attachment is not only as a predictor of consumer behaviour but also because of the positive impact and intuitively beneficial results that brand attachment can bring to an enterprise (Thomson et al.,2005). According to Fedorikhin et al. (2008), the establishment of a strong bond between consumers and the brand can help the spread and expansion of the brand to a large extent. In addition, the brand attachment will enable consumers to greatly improve the resources they invest in the brand (e.g., time, money) in order to maintain the relationship (MacInnis & Folkes, 2017).
Moreover, brand attachment can effectively promote the profitability of the brand. For example, brand attachment increases the price premium power of the brand (Orth et al., 2010), enhances the consumption power of consumers (Schau et al., 2009) and increases the degree of brand usage (Rossiter & Bellman, 2012).
Last but not least, with the increase of consumers' attachment to the brand, consumers will be more inclined to participate in the behaviour of the brand. For example, in brand advocacy, consumers will actively spread the brand (word-of-mouth), and when the brand is affected by negative information or the company has unethical behaviour, consumers will defend the brand (Park et al., 2010; Schmalz & Orth, 2012). Eventually, the relationship between the consumer and the brand will evolve into brand loyalty, with consumers beginning to make a commitment to the brand and reject other brands (Park et al., 2013; Thomson et al., 2005).
2.4.3 Brand attachment connect with attachment theory
As mentioned above (Section 2.2), attachment theory was proposed by Bowlby (1969, 1973) to explain the intimate relationships and emotional bonds formed between infants and their mothers. Hazan and Shaver (1987) extended the concept of attachment theory to adult dyadic romantic relationships. The increase in attachment theory-based research by marketing scholars and practitioners shows that the attachment theory can transcend the scope of interpersonal theory (Mehta & Belk, 1991; Schultz et al., 1989, 1993; Fournier, 1998; Belk 1988). Research has shown that consumers can be attached to brands (Fournier, 1998), collections (Slater, 2001), possessions (Kleine & Baker 2004; Ball & Tasaki 1992) or other special kinds of objects (Kleine et al., 1995; Richins, 1994; Ball & Tasaki, 1992; Wallendorf & Arnould, 1988).
As attested by MacInnis and Folkes (2017), on account of the concept of brand
anthropomorphism, the establishment of the relationship between individuals and brands is similar to interpersonal relationship. The formation of the emotional attachment between consumers and brands (as relationship partners) can be explained by interpersonal theory (Fournier, 1998; 2012), such as the need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) theory and attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969).
By means of attachment theory and need to belong theory, when individuals lack intimate relationships, they will need and seek out brands as relationship partners to alleviate the negative emotional state brought by loneliness (Loh et al., 2020). Previous research results also show that the form of a close relationship between consumer and brand is characterized as analogous to the explanation of interpersonal attachment theory. According to Mikulincer and Shaver (2003), when consumers experience enjoyment or pleasure or feel psychologically safe and comfortable, they will establish a personally significant relationship with the brand. Park et al. also published a similar view in 2010. The premise condition of building the
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attachment relationship between consumer and brand is that brands can enrich consumers' experience of pleasure and comfort. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe those lonely people who lack intimate relationships will actively engage in closeness with brands.
Therefore, the hypothesis as below:
H1: Emotional loneliness positively influences brand attachment.
2.5. Brand Loyalty
2.5.1 Brand loyalty and its importance in marketing
The concept of brand loyalty has appeared in brand marketing literature for a long time, and it has made a great contribution to theoretical advancement (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001). Numerous businesses have been pursuing to create brand loyalty towards consumers for more interests (Russell-Bennett et al., 2013). The history of brand loyalty could be traced back to at least Guest (1944). Brand loyalty implies consumers’ loyalty to a brand itself without
considering whether the product or service benefits the consumers or not (Ong, Md & Zien Yusoff, 2016). According to Quester and Lim (2003), brand loyalty is also defined as not only an unchanging purchasing habit but also an undivided attitude towards a particular brand. They also argued that brand loyalty appears in a consumer-brand relationship once the brand successfully brings consumers with pleasant or fulfil their unique needs. Thus a personal attachment has been developed between the consumer and brand (Quester & Lim, 2003). Further, loyalty is based on the emotional connections between consumers and the brand that they consider as a trustworthy partner (Aurier & de Lanauze, 2012).
A majority of researchers have an agreement that brand loyalty has made a significant contribution to the market. For example, the positive effects (e.g., save advertising costs) of word of mouth among consumers (Sutikno, 2011), the variety of competitive advantages it creates to the businesses (Iglesias, Singh, & Batista-Foguet, 2011), the occupation of more market share (Gounaris & Stathakopoulos, 2004), and the increase of cash flows and profits (Watson et al., 2015; Wernerfelt, 1991). Loyal consumers also proved to tend to spend more on a piece of merchandise or service, and their expenses gradually increase over time. Thus, those consumers became a vivid brand advertisement (Aaker, 1997; Kapferer, 1997). Besides that, loyalty also helps marketers reduce the costs of attracting and retaining consumers (Reichheld & Teal, 1996), which is more obvious in the service market (Rundle‐Thiele & Mackay, 2001). In addition, most of the loyal consumers are less likely to be sensitive to the price and less likely to switch to other brands compared to their favourable ones (Reichheld & Teal, 1996).
All of the fore-mentioned positive effects of brand loyalty reflect the significance of loyalty in the brand (Loureiro et al., 2017). Since those positive outputs, brand loyalty was also defined by Khan and Mahmood (2012) as the consumer's unquestioning trust and a powerful
relationship with the brand, which is improbable to be influenced by general circumstance.
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According to Nam et al. (2011), although a great amount of research has been conducted with respect to brand loyalty, there are basically two alternative dimensions from researchers with respect to consumer loyalty, which respectively is behavioural loyalty and attitudinal loyalty. Reichheld (1996) claimed that attitudinal loyalty is considerably stronger than behavioural loyalty and has a longer duration mainly because the former involves emotion. Nevertheless, the one-dimensional method remains with different opinions and incongruous statements in the marketing research (Mustapha et al., 2019).
Behavioural loyalty implies the constancy of repeated purchasing towards a specific brand over time (Nam et al., 2011). One of the advantages of behavioural loyalty is that it could be simply measured by observing consumers’ actual behaviour rather than measuring their assertion or commitment (Odin et al., 2001). In addition, the behaviour data could be easily collected and measured, especially for long-term research on brand loyalty, thereby leading to lower expenditure and convenience (Dekimpe et al., 1997). Figuratively speaking, it is simple to observe and measure a consumer’s repeated consumption towards a specific brand within a fixed period of time (Quester & Lim, 2003). However, behavioural loyalty is deficient in providing a complete explanation of the whole brand loyalty development process as well as its modifications in consumers (Dick & Basu, 1994). Moreover, research shows that a behaviourally loyal consumer presents a strong tendency to find an alternative brand once their regular purchasing habit is disordered (Quester & Lim, 2003). Thus, it is important to mention that “true” brand loyalty is beyond habitual and repetitive buying behaviour (Quester & Lim, 2003). So that it is critical to research brand loyalty’s attitudinal make-up that could help marketers select and develop a precise target market (Quester & Lim, 2003).
Attitudinal loyalty implies the psychological allegiance, that is, the commitment made by a consumer to perform consumption (Nam et al., 2011) also refers to a consumer's growing attitude towards a certain brand (Quester & Lim, 2003). In other words, attitudinal loyalty could be understood as the mere intentions of a consumer to buy and recommend to others rather than carrying out the purchase actions (Nam et al., 2011). Customers’ attitude towards a brand is usually measured depending on three dimensions which are conative, affective, and cognitive (Oliver, 1997). According to Van den Brink, Odekerken‐Schröder, and Pauwels (2006), the effective section is related to a consumer’s emotional links with a specific brand, the cognitive section implies the store of knowledge about a brand, and the conative section could be explained as the buying intention towards a brand. Jacoby and Kyner (1973) identified those three components of attitude in their study on brand loyalty and stated that brand loyalty means much more than making a buying action. Since behavioural loyalty also refers to the consumers' tendency to purchase a brand, a conative attitude towards a brand is more likely to predict consumers' behavioural intentions (Hammond et al., 1996). To go further, consumers' strong behavioural intentions are proven to inspire them to repurchase from the brand to which they are loyal (Saini & Singh, 2020).
2.5.3 Attachment and brand loyalty
From a relational perspective, brands are regarded by consumers as intimate relationship partners (Fournier et al.,1998). Although there are barriers when comparing consumer-brand relationships to interpersonal relationships (Bengtsson, 2003; Fournier et al., 1998; Tynan, 1997), a majority of consumers still tend to establish affective bonds with the brands they like, and this leads to more involvement in the loyalty process (Aurier & de Lanauze, 2012).
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Since brand loyalty was stated by Reichheld (1996) as the reflection of consumers' commitment to maintaining a long-term relationship towards a specific brand, emotional brand attachment reflects consumers' feeling of connection (Thomson et al., 2005), and a higher emotional attachment also results in an increase in consumers' emotional dependency towards the brand (So et al., 2013). Thus, consumers are willing to maintain proximity with a brand with the increase of their connection with that brand (Park et al., 2010). So, a higher level of emotional attachment between consumers and brand also reflects the willingness of consumers to maintain a long-term relationship with that brand; that is, they are more loyal to the brand (So et al., 2013).
In addition, consumers are considered more likely to focus both on the quality and
maintenance of a relationship with a brand instead of solely depending on their perception of the quality process (Aurier & de Lanauze, 2012). In other words, they need commitment from which their satisfaction would be fulfilled by the brand, to be exchanged for attitudinal
loyalty. Those consumers' effective appeal to the brand implies more establish attitudinal loyalty than solely a short-term promotional benefit or cost-saving (Dick & Basu, 1994). Since attitude is proved to be the predictor of behaviour (Glasman and Albarracín, 2006), consumers who are attitudinal loyal to a brand also reflect a higher behavioural intention (Tanford, 2013).
Behavioural loyalty could not be observed directly most of the time, so that behavioural intentions are used by researchers to measure behavioural loyalty instead (Tanford, 2013). Word-of-mouth has thus been used since it indicates the intentions of consumers to
recommend the brand to others (Tanford, 2013), and it also reflects consumers' brand
advocacy as mentioned above. Since brand advocacy is proved to be a consequence of brand attachment, the authors thereby have reason to assume that brand attachment will influence both attitudinal and behavioural brand loyalty. In general, it is vital for marketers to
endeavour to develop intimacy, proximity and to show their concerning attitude when
connecting consumers with a brand during the process of reinforcing loyalty (Too, Souchon & Thirkell, 2001).
Combined with the above relationships between brand attachment and brand loyalty, we assume that brand attachment plays a positive intermediate role between emotional loneliness and brand loyalty, that is, the higher the degree of emotional loneliness, the stronger the degree of brand attachment, and thus the higher the degree of brand loyalty. Lonely people will not only need intimate relationships in psychology but also be affected by loneliness in behaviour to seek intimate relationships (Cacioppo et al., 2006). Therefore, we speculate that lonely people are more loyal to brands than non-lonely people in both behaviour and attitude. Hence, as follows:
H2: Emotional brand attachment positively mediates the influence of emotional loneliness on behavioural brand loyalty.
H3: Emotional brand attachment positively mediates the influence of emotional loneliness on attitudinal brand loyalty.
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Figure 1 summarizes all the hypotheses in a conceptual model.
Figure 1, conceptual model
3.
Methodology
__________________________________________________________________________________________
This chapter will present research design which includes research philosophy, approach, and strategy. Then, the research method will be introduced including data collection, survey design, sampling method, and data analysis method. Finally, ethical consideration will be introduced.
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3.1 Research design
3.1.1 Research philosophy
In accordance with Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2009), the research philosophy was defined as the intrinsic essence and expansion of existing knowledge. It is critical for researchers to have a profound understanding of research philosophy since it decides the perspectives from which the researchers formulate research problems as well as clarify their findings (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2009). There are four mainstream research
philosophies which are interpretivism, pragmatism, realism, and positivism (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2009). However, positivism and interpretivism dominantly exist in the field of social science and business administration (Bryman & Bell, 2011).
Positivism implies the purpose of researching social reality through the approaches from natural science and then producing scientific research (Bryman & Bell, 2011). As the contrasting epistemology to positivism, interpretivism critically involves more investigation in depth to have a better understanding of the social world without much reliance on the scientific model.
This research aims to predict and investigate the influence of emotional loneliness on consumers' brand loyalty under the catalysis of brand attachment in China. Since there is no
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interaction that relates to the research between authors and respondents, and the research involves the explanation of a social phenomenon, hypotheses testing as well as the value-free approach (Bryman & Bell, 2011), the positivism research paradigm was thereby adopted by the authors in a descriptive way.
3.1.2 Research approach
According to Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2009), the research approach involves the application methods of selected theories, carrying out certain data collection methods, and the design of the whole paper. Briefly, a research approach is used to investigate the essence of the relationship between theory and research (Bryman & Bell, 2011). Two dominant research approaches are mentioned by Bryman and Bell (2011), which respectively is deductive
approach and inductive approach. A deductive approach is applied when the existing theory is tested by researchers, thereby guides the research, where an inductive approach is applied for developing theory (Bryman & Bell, 2011).
A deductive approach is adopted by authors since hypotheses in this research are raised and tested based on the existing studies. The deductive approach also guides the data collection process, specifically on how to collect data related to the theory (Bryman & Bell, 2011). Relationships between independent and dependent variables are discovered objectively by using a deductive approach, and it is in congruence with the positivistic research philosophy (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2012).
This deduction of this research appears linear based on a clearly and logically established theoretical framework. In addition, the risk of bias and subjective value from authors would be reduced by using a deductive approach, which means the findings are solely dependent on statistical results and whether the hypotheses are accepted or not (Bryman & Bell, 2011). 3.1.3 Research strategy
According to Bryman and Bell (2011), it is meaningful for researchers to differentiate
between quantitative and qualitative research. Both two types of research strategies help with categorizing distinctive business research methods and thereby guiding numerous business research practices (Bryman & Bell, 2011). The quantitative aims at collecting and analyzing data by emphasizing the importance of quantification (Bryman & Bell, 2011) and
generalizing results from a big sample size (Saunders et al., 2012). On the contrary,
qualitative research emphasizes words instead of quantification when collecting and analyzing data (Bryman & Bell, 2011). Whilst qualitative research predominantly consists of the
inductive approach to develop theories, and the quantitative research method entails a deductive approach to test theories in a descriptive way (Bryman & Bell, 2011).
To achieve the purpose of this research, quantitative research is conducted as a suitable and adequate method. Since this research involves finding the degree of correlations and the linear relationships between variables, data's reliability and credibility are ensured with a high number of participants (Saunders et al., 2012). Moreover, the hypotheses are tested solely based on the statistical data, which means no personal emotion or value is considered in the analysis. Compared to qualitative research, quantitative research ensures the data is analyzed objectively, which is in line with the chosen positivistic research philosophy and deductive research approach (Bryman & Bell, 2011).
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3.2 Research method
3.2.1 Data collection
In this research, primary data is collected by authors through conducting a survey. According to (Thietart, 2001), the survey is the most appropriate as well as efficient method to obtain the result. A survey implies a well-formulated set of questions pre-prepared for respondents that they are able to answer with clearly interpreted choices (Sekaran & Bougie, 2003). The survey is also regarded as a convenient way to conduct quantitative research since
respondents are more likely to give feedback towards a simple-designed form without the risk of confusion. Moreover, a large range of sample population is provided for the research by using a survey, which makes the research processes more flexible (Harris & Muijs, 2004). There are three main elements of a survey which are the questions, the format, and the rating tools (Nigel, Brierley & MacDougall, 1999). The survey's questions in this research are brief, clear, and with no bias to ensure an accurate result. Since an online survey is a most
commonly used tool within the business administration field, a self-completion online survey is designed by authors and two online survey platforms named WJX and Qualtrics
(jibs.eu.qualtrics.com) were used (Saunders et al., 2012). The reason is that the respondents reflected the authors that they had trouble opening the link and QR code of the survey in Qualtrics due to the internet condition in China. The authors thus shifted to use a Chinese survey platform WJX. WeChat is an important Cross-platform mobile phone messaging application in China, and it has similar features to WhatsApp (Lien & Cao, 2014). The
authors thus directly sent out both the QR code and the link of the survey to an initial group of chosen respondents through Wechat. Variables appearing in the survey were ranked in a proper order to simplify the layout structure. Thus, the data that was collected through online surveys could be directly transformed into the data type, which suits Micro Excel and SPSS software. Online surveys also have many advantages such as low cost, faster response, attractive formats, and so on (Bryman & Bell, 2011).
3.2.2 Survey design and measurement
To ensure the willingness of respondents to finish the survey, the authors briefly introduced the purpose and security of the data collection process. A total of 38 significant items were carefully determined by the authors to keep the survey concise and short enough (Saunders et al., 2012). Including 31 items adopted from three different scales, two items to measure respondents' personal preference of brand, and a combination of five items related to both demographics characteristics which respectively is age, gender, relationship status, education level, and income before tax.
Ten items were chosen from Russell's (1996) UCLA Loneliness Scale Version 3 to measure loneliness since it is a widely used and accepted method for quantifying loneliness and converting the feeling of loneliness into operationalization variables. Besides that, plenty of research on loneliness has proven to use this scale (Russell et al., 1980; Russell et al., 1978). The Cronbach Alpha coefficient of this scale has been produced by Russell in 1996, which is range from 0.89 to 0.94 (Russell, 1996).
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Next, data related to respondents' personal preference were collected. Four product categories were provided for the respondents, which included car, beverage, watch, and clothes. The respondents were also asked to choose one of the categories and write down their favourite brand within that category since all the four categories of products proved to be meaningful both publicly and privately (Loh et al., 2020). These two items were arranged between loneliness items and brand-related items, and the authors kindly asked the respondents to think of the brand they have chosen during the following part of the survey.
The brand attachment was measured with ten items selected from a well-structured Brand Attachment Scale through depicting ten distinguished feelings that consumers have towards a specific brand (Thomson et al., 2005). This scale is suited for this research since it
distinguished emotional attachment from other constructs (e.g. brand satisfaction, involvement, etc.) along with a series of validity, scale stability and reliability tests, thus making the data collection more precise and reliable (Thomson et al., 2005). The Cronbach Alpha coefficient of this scale is 0.93, which means this scale is reliable (Thomson et al., 2005).
Brand loyalty was measured through the brand loyalty scale developed by Quester and Lim (2003). This scale contains three components (cognitive, affective & conative) of loyalty and established from two different dimensions, which is attitudinal loyalty and behavioural loyalty, which suits this research. Moreover, the validity and internal consistency of this scale have already been tested by Quester and Lim (2003), which proved to be reliable.
Three related cognitive items and three affective related items were selected from the brand loyalty scale to measure attitudinal brand loyalty since cognitive and affective has been defined by Jacoby and Kyner (1973) as two components of attitude that could reflect brand loyalty.
Five conative (behavioural) related items were adopted from the brand loyalty scale to measure behavioural brand loyalty since it is not possible to observe respondents’ purchasing action. Besides that, both the behavioural habits, preference, and behavioural buying
intentions are proved to be able to reflect consumers’ behavioural loyalty (Quester & Lim, 2003).
A 5-point Likert scale was used for loneliness where 1 stand for "never" and 5 represents "always" to operationalize the personal traits, and the frequency of feeling loneliness was needed to be transformed into numerical scores to fit the quantitative analysis. For both brand attachment, attitudinal loyalty, and behavioural loyalty, where 1 stands for "strongly disagree" and 5 as "strongly agree" since the degree of respondents' agreement towards the specific item was also needed to be transformed into a number when conducting analysis.
Finally, the chosen respondents were all from China, so that Chinese Mandarin is required to remove the language barriers. The authors thereby translated all the components of the survey from English to Chinese and emphasized the real meaning of the sentences instead of merely using literal translation to eliminate the misinterpretation and any other possible errors (Usunier, 1998). More details of the survey could be found in Table 2.
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As stated by Bryman and Bell (2011), a sample is inevitably needed when conducting a quantitative study since it is unlikely to reach all individuals of a population. Thus, the findings of the chosen sample must be generalized and are able to give a rational
interpretation of the whole population. Since the purpose of this research is to find out the intrinsic influence and mediation effects of brand attachment between loneliness and brand loyalty, the authors thereby selected the population from Chinese working adults. Working adults are supposed to be more stressed and appear anxious due to a variety of life events such as competition, loans, divorce, and physical health, which indirectly induce their feeling of emotional loneliness (Loh et al., 2020).
The next step was to decide the sampling methods. According to Bryman and Bell (2011), there are mainly two sampling methods which are probability sampling and non-probability sampling. Probability sampling indicates that the units in a population have an equal chance to be selected, where non-probability sampling selects the sample purposefully and suits numerous sampling strategies (Bryman & Bell, 2011). This research thereby used non-probability sampling to ensure the target units have more chance to be chosen (Bryman & Bell, 2011). In addition, it is also impossible for the authors to get the whole list of the
population due to the time and space constraints which mean the sample could not be selected randomly. A sampling error (difference between the selected sample and population) would occur and could not be avoided since it is hard to find a truly representative sample (Bryman & Bell, 2011).
More specific, snowball sampling was used to increase the possibility of locating the chosen characteristics, which is loneliness, in the population by mainly obtaining referrals (Malhotra et al., 2017). An initial group of people who are considered more likely to be lonely were selected by the authors. Next, those people were asked to identify others who might also experience loneliness from the target population. The increase of referrals finally leads to a snowballing effect and results in relatively low sampling costs (Malhotra et al., 2017).
3.2.4 Data analysis method
In this section, both the data analysis tool and method are demonstrated. The authors mainly used the statistical software IBM SPSS 26 and Smart PLS to conduct the research. The raw data collected from Qualtrics and WJX was directly exported to Microsoft Excel and
eventually imported to SPSS. Next, A series of statistical analysis was conducted for the aim of testing the hypotheses (Bryman & Bell, 2011).
Firstly, the authors used SPSS to conduct a frequency analysis with the intention of obtaining several descriptive tables which could reflect the distributional difference of each
demographic variable (Bryman & Bell, 2011). The percentage of value from ordinal variable includes age, gender, marital status, highest educational level, and income before tax, would be produced and analysed.
Next, a descriptive analysis was conducted to describe and differentiate the rest 31 continuous latent variables (Saunders et al., 2009). The invalid data value could also be found and deleted by checking the table. The mean, median, and standard deviation of each scale item was produced and then used by the authors to interpret and explain the data values. The mean (average value) could be used to measure the central tendency of data values. Since a 5-point Likert scale was used, the data collected by the authors would be numerical and hereby could
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possibly produce a meaningful mean (Saunders et al., 2009). A median value could be
regarded as a point that divides the distribution scores evenly (Pallant, 2011), and the standard deviation was used to measure the dispersion of each data value and demonstrate their
difference from the average value (Saunders et al., 2009).
Thirdly, a reliability statistic was conducted by the authors to check the internal consistency of the scale items (Saunders et al., 2009). Since the scales contains four subscales that used to measure the total scores of both the dependent variable and independent variables, the authors also tested the reliability of both subscale and the total scale (Pallant, 2011). The Cronbach alpha that item deleted was also be calculated since the authors hope to check if there was any variable’s alpha is higher than the scale’s alpha which is not acceptable (Pallant, 2011). A correlation matrix was produced by the authors. Both the direction and strength of the relationships between every two variables could be found in this matrix (Pallant, 2011). Pearson correlation coefficient r was calculated to check if the linear relationships between two variables are negative ( -1 < r <0) or positive (0 < r < 1). The value of Pearson r is equal to 1 or -1 reveals two variables move in exactly the same direction and percentage, which is also called perfectly correlated (Pallant, 2011).
Moreover, a Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was established by the authors through Smart PLS to conduct the mediation analysis, and a bootstrapping technique was also used in SEM. SEM is proved to be an efficient and convenient statistical technique to measure the causal relationships between two variables (Razak, Zamzuri & Suradi, 2018). The authors used Smart PLS to build the SEM Bootstrapping refers to a resampling method that is able to produce the estimate of standard errors and also create the confidence intervals (Hu & Wang, 2010). Bootstrapping is important for conducting the mediating effect analysis since it could compute a more accurate significance of the mediation effect when there are measurement errors in the variables (Hu & Wang, 2010). The authors used Smart PLS to produce mainly two output which is standardized estimates, and indirect, direct & total effects.
2000 bootstrap samples were chosen, and then the authors used Bias-corrected confidence intervals to measure the degree of uncertainty or certainty in the chosen non-probability sampling method. Path coefficient and significance were mainly used by the authors to analyse the mediation effects of brand attachment from emotional loneliness to attitudinal (behavioural) brand loyalty.
Finally, the authors conducted a multigroup analysis to further explore the effects of demographic variables on all relationship paths. The authors divided respondents into two different groups in terms of their age, gender, marital status, educational level, and income before tax to make the comparison. The income classification was based on the Chinese tax standard (China STA., 2021).
3.3 Ethical consideration
As stated by Saunders and Lewis (2012), there are three ethical related fundamental principles that every single researcher should follow, which is respect the principle of individual,
fairness, and mutual benefits. The authors also follow these principles throughout the entire study. Firstly, any unethical activity and harm were avoided to the most extent during the
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survey for preventing any invasion of respondents. The survey was voluntarily participated by respondents, and they were able to choose the time period that most suitable, which means no pressure was put on them. In addition, all of the respondents were shown respect by the authors, therefore minimized the occurrence of wrongdoing. According to Bell and Bryman (2007), informed consent also plays a critical role when conducting the survey since it assures the involvement of the research are protected. Thus, a consent form was provided to the respondents beforehand to ensure they are completely informed.
Ethical issues are also considered by authors when collecting the primary data. Due to the reason that all the data was collected from Chinese working adults through the internet, the authors will control, process, and finally delete the data follow not only the GDPR but also the Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China (Cyberspace Administration of China, 2016).
Moreover, there is a clear declaration in the survey that describes the purpose of this research and the use of data. However, other details that related to this research were not told to the respondents because the authors considered the statement from Gans (1962) that people are more likely to hide their actions and attitudes they think unacceptable if a researcher is fully honest with them, which might eventually lead to dishonest answers. Further, all respondents anonymously participated in the survey, and no open question that involves their personal opinions were asked in the questionnaire, which will also increase the authenticity of the data collected.
