Brand addiction is one of the most important ways that consumers engage with brands. Other types of consumerbrand relationships include brand attachment, brand love, brand loyalty, brand passion and brand trust. This study provides an experientially grounded conceptualization and definition of brand addiction that distinguishes it clearly from other forms of consumer-brand relationships; and also from compulsive buying and acquisitive desire. Qualitative data from focus groups and projective-technique-based interviews were used to identify eleven salient properties which, in combination, characterize brand addiction: acquisitiveness; anxiety-irritability, bonding, brand exclusivity, collecting, compulsive urges, financial management versus debt tolerance, dependence, gratification, mental and behavioral preoccupation, and word of mouth. We compare brand addiction with the features of other consumer-brand relationships. The findings suggest that brand addiction is different from other consumer-brand-relationship concepts, and does not necessarily lead to harmful consequences for all brand addicts (unlike many other types of addiction).

Introduction

Brand addiction is one of the most important ways in which consumers engage with brands (Fajer & Schouten, 1995; Reimann, Castaño, Zaichkowsky, & Bechara, 2012). Consumers also associate with brands via brand attachment (Malär, Krohmer, Hoyer, & Nyffenegger, 2011; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995); brand liking (Anselmsson, Johansson, & Persson, 2008); brand love (Albert, Merunka, & Valette-Florence, 2008; Batra, Ahuvia, & Bagozzi, 2012; Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006); brand loyalty (Fournier & Yao, 1997; Jacoby & Kyner, 1973; Oliver, 1999); brand passion (Swimberghe, Astakhova, & Wooldridge, 2014); and brand trust (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001; Delgado-Ballester & Munuera-Aleman, 2001). Among addictive consumption behaviors, compulsive buying has attracted the most research attention. However, addictive brand behaviors have not been explored in depth since this phenomenon was noted in Fournier’s (1998) seminal paper on consumer-brand relationships. Consumer-brand relationships involve emotions that range from non-intense feelings to passionate love culminating in addictive obsession (e.g., Fehr & Russell, 1991; Fournier, 1998; Sternberg, 1986) (see Table 1 for definitions of these various concepts within consumer-brand relationships). We respond to recent calls for further research into consumers’ addictive behaviors (Fetscherin & Heinrich, 2015; Fournier & Alvarez, 2012; Park, Eisingerich, & Park, 2013; Swimberghe et al., 2014) by focusing on the salient properties of brand addiction at the conceptual level; and exploring the associated boundary conditions that underlie brand addiction compared with other forms of consumer-brand relationships. We begin by reviewing relevant literature on consumer-brand relationships and addictive behaviors in order to identify the focal issues. We then describe the procedures for data collection, analysis and interpretation. We report the essential features of brand addiction identified from our focus groups and projective-technique-based interviews. We offer a conceptual definition of brand addiction from a more inductive, phenomenon-based approach to consumer-psychology related issues (Pham, 2013). We then compare the essential features of brand addiction to other types of consumer-brand relationships. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications, limitations and directions for future research on addictive consumer-brand relationships.