The structural effects of affective and cognitive elaboration in formation of customer-brand relationship

Abstract

Customer-brand relationships exist in many tourism categories; however, these relationships are rarely specified in the integrated resort category. Because an integrated resort consists of various types of travel services, customers form their attitudes based on their pleasure and sensory experiences as well as their cognitively oriented travel activities. This research suggests a model depicting both affective and cognitive elaboration processes that lead to building customer-brand relationship. The findings revealed that customers' affective (e.g. affective brand experience) and cognitive (e.g. intellectual brand experience) elaborations are elicited concurrently in the formation of brand relationship quality and behavior intention toward an integrated resort brand. The novelty of this study is to provide the understanding of (1) an integrated model of cognitive and affective elaboration of brand experience processing; and (2) a mechanism of brand experience, brand relationship quality, and behavioral outcome in the integrated resort industry.