Introduction

In exceedingly competitive business environments, brand emotional benefits can lead to high satisfaction (Candi & Kahn, 2016; He & Wang, 2014) because commercial buyers are claimed to value the emotional security offered by a brand with a strong, positive image (Roper & Davies, 2010). In practice, B2B marketers have gradually realized the importance of brand information in clients’ purchasing choices and thus, invest considerable resources to create unique brand values and establish differentiated brand images. Accordingly, in academics, a small number of studies have also shown that endowing a brand with human characteristics can create positive emotional associations and bring additional value to companies (Herbst & Merz, 2011; Veloutsou & Taylor, 2012). However, on the whole, the emotional benefits of B2B branding have not aroused sufficient academic attention (Candi & Kahn, 2016). Our comprehensive review of relevant extant literature reveals three important gaps that warrant further investigations. First, to the best of our knowledge, no study incorporates human values into brand concepts and analyzes emotional benefits from the perspective of brand values in the B2B domain. It is noteworthy that as one of core constructs in brand personification, brand personality developed by Aaker (1997) represents an important early effort in analyzing emotional benefits and has been commonly adopted by scholars in the B2B domain as a theoretical basis for research (Herbst & Merz, 2011; Rojas-Méndez, Erenchun-Podlech, & Silva-Olave, 2004; Veloutsou & Taylor, 2012). However, this abstract trait-based construct lacks generalizability in cross-cultural settings (Aaker, Benet-Martínez, & Garolera, 2001; Sung & Tinkham, 2005; Torelli, Monga, and Kaikati, 2012), which limits its usefulness in representing B2B brand concepts and in serving as a brand positioning strategy framework in the context of globalization. In contrast, brand values are motivation-based and driven by human needs. These values have shared meanings across different cultures and thus, can be universally understood (Torelli, Monga, et al., 2012). Therefore, we try to extend human values to B2B brand concepts and provide new insights for B2B companies on their brand positioning strategies. Second, relationship marketing (RM), as one of the dominant mantras in business strategy circles, has garnered extensive attention from both academics and practitioners (Hibbard, Brunel, Dant, & Dawn, 2001; Palmatier, Dant, Grewal, & Evans, 2006; Samaha, Beck, & Palmatier, 2014). So far, few B2B studies have examined RM from the perspective of brand values and explored how similar brand values affect the outcome of RM efforts.