Abstract—
This paper seeks to explore how symbolic brand
features and functional brand features affect consumers' brand
preferences. Although researches on brand preferences have
been focused on consumers’ cognitive judgments of brand
attributes on a rational basis, the shift to experiential marketing,
the cornerstone of branding, has expanded the role of the brand
from a bundle of attributes to experiences. In this paper, besides
functional features of brand (price and appearance), emotional
factors of brand (experience, brand personality, and
self-congruity) were chosen to determine consumers' brand
preferences criteria. It is found that symbolic/emotional factors
were the main factors for brand preferences.
Index Terms—
Brand preferences, experience, brand
personality, self-congruity.
Akin Kocak is with Ankara University, Turkey (e-mail:
kocak@politics.ankara.edu.tr)
Nursel Ruzgar is with Ryerson University, Canada (e-mail:
nruzgar@ryerson.ca)
[PDF]
Cite:
Akin Kocak and Nursel Ruzgar, "
Antecedents of Brand Preference: Symbolic or Functional," Journal of Economics, Business and Management vol. 5, no.10, pp.
331-335, 2017.