What is Brand Attachment

Research shows that some brands are like religions and have cult-like fans who perceive the brands as sacred. This chapter conceptualizes brand worship and explores its dimensions by using netnography to explore Apple's online fan communities in China from the perspective of dimensions of religiosity. The findings demonstrate that the relationship between extremely devoted fans and their faithful brand exhibits nearly the same characteristics as the relationship between a religious person and a religion. The results emerged with three dimensions of brand worship: brand faith (value identification, paranoid, and hope), brand religiosity (wonder, awe, and ecstasy) and brand devotion (gratitude and allegiance). The chapter contributes to the field of consumer-brand relationships and offers some managerial implications for building brands through a religious approach to cultivate devoted fans.