As the world’s theatres, music venues and restaurants recover from the annual Tsunami of demand known as Valentine’s Day, we provide the answer to Lionel Bart’s eternal question “Where Is Love?” and the even bigger conundrum: “Where Is Brand Love?”
Best I can tell, the ‘First Date’ in science’s romance with of L-U-R-V is 1986 (apologies to Ovid, Bill Shakespeare and Barry White). In the year remembered for Chernobyl, Chess and The Pet Shop Boys’ West End Girls (sorry again Bill S. and Barry W.) a young (37) Yale Professor named Robert J. Sternberg* wrote a paper called A Triangular Theory of Love**
According to this theory, love is comprised of three basic components:
a) intimacy, which encompasses the feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness one experiences in loving relationships;
b) passion, which encompasses the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation;
c) decision/commitment, which encompasses, in the short term, that one loves another, and in the long term, the commitment to maintain that love
By 1988 (Simply Irresistible and Rain Man) marketing had fallen in love with Sternberg’s theoretical ménage a trois. Two professors at the University of South Carolina (Shimp and Madden) adapted the triangular theory for the realm of brand dynamics in which:
‘Consumers form relationships with consumption objects (products brands, stores, etc.) which range from feelings of antipathy, to slight fondness, all the way up to what would, in person-to-person relations, amount to love,”
And abbreviated Sternberg’s threesome to liking, yearning and decision/commitment***
An interesting adaptation, if a little one-sided. After all, it wasn’t like consumers’ love for (product, brands, stores, etc.) was unrequited. On the contrary, maintaining a healthy CBR (Consumer Brand Relationship) was (and is) a matter of life-and-death to all firms except those holding life-or-death monopolies (water, electricity, broadband, etc.).
And what did this ‘relationship’ really look like on the ground, or between the balance-sheets?
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
‘Although the relationship metaphor dominates contemporary marketing thought and practise, surprisingly little empirical work has been conducted on relational phenomena in the consumer products domain, particularly at the level of the brand’ (Susan M. Fournier)
The complaint above was written in 1998 (My Heart Will Go On and Saving Private Ryan). It was the first sentence of Fournier’s Foreword to her seminal:
‘Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research’
in which she stated that:
‘Brands may become an active relationship partner for the consumer and provide meanings in a psycho-socio-cultural context’
Which is great, for the two long-time bedfellows, Psychology and Marketing, but it doesn’t help us, or little orphan Oliver, with our quest …WHERE IS LOVE?
But help was at hand…
In that same year, 1998, scientists using PET (Positron Emission Tomography) observed that release of dopamine (the ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitter) was increased in the dorsal striatum (a part of the brain that controls action selection, decision-making and habit-formation) during monetary reward tasks.
Subsequent neuroimaging research, later aided by ALE (Activation Likelihood Estimation) meta-analysis, suggested that:
‘The greatest likelihood for brain activation in Brand Love was in …areas of the dorsal striatum such as …the left caudate body (a C-shaped structure involved in movement, cognition and emotion) the putamen (an area involved in in learning and motor control including speech articulation, language functions reward, cognitive function and addiction) and the left insula (‘..a hub integrating sensory, emotional and cognitive information).
“Well young Oliver, what do you say to that?”
In 2020 (Blinding Lights and Tenet) the scientific paper quoted above was published showing how ALE analysis had apparently identified the separate brain areas relating to Mother Love, Romantic Love and Brand Love.****
Here are a couple of (edited) extracts:
Maternal Love:
‘…cortical regions activated in maternal love (such as the globus pallidus or ‘GP’) are related to social cognition such as empathy, theory of mind, and caregiving. …In addition, the GP is involved in pair bonding and altruism, which are kinds of social cognition. …Some studies on brand love also have considered empathy as a crucial element in brand love (Fournier and Alvarez, 2012; Kervyn et al., 2012). However, in our meta-analysis, these social cognition-related brain regions were not activated in brand love; as such, we assume that brand love has a very weak disposition toward social cognitive aspects.
‘Romantic Love:
…romantic love shares more common brain-activated regions with brand love than maternal love, especially in the dorsal striatum. …The brain regions activated in romantic love are involved with impulsive desire and addiction. …However, activation of these brain regions was not observed in brand love. Therefore, both romantic and brand love are involved in attitudes toward certain rewards related to goal-oriented and habitual behaviours. Romantic love, however, showed dispositions toward more impulsive, intimate, and passionate relationships compared to brand love. The marketing literature stresses the importance of building impulsive, intimate, and passionate relationships between brands and consumers. ….Thus, while these strong emotions are important elements for brand love, we did not observe activation of brain regions related to impulsive, intimate, and passionate relationships in brand love in the present study.’
Allocating specific functions to brain areas, is a notoriously tricky business. Let alone evaluating what stimuli actually trigger activity in those areas. And why? But as techniques such as ALE enhance our ability to interpret the results neuroimaging (MRI, EEG, PET, CT MEG fMRI, MRA and NIRS) then we will, in time, be better equipped to authenticate what consumers really feel. Rather than what they say (or think) they feel, or marketeers believe -or think they believe. Ultimately, however, the final answer to Where Is Love? will tell us next to nothing, in and of itself. Because for most of us it’s not a question of location, location, location, so much as activation, activation, activation.
Or as Big Baz so eloquently put it.
DT 12 February, 2025
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