The creation and management of customer relationships is fundamental to the practice of marketing and marketers have long maintained a keen interest in these relationships. The aim of this book is to advance knowledge about consumer-brand relationships by disseminating new research that may inform theory and company best practices.

Foreword Introduction: The Why, How, and So What of Consumers' Relationships with Their Brands Part I: The "What" of Brand Relationships: Exploring Brand Relationship Varieties and Type 1. When is our Connection to Brands like our Connection to People?: Differentiating between Consumer-Brand Relationships and Interpersonal Relationships 2. Exploring Relationship Analogues in the Brand Space 3. Understanding Negative Consumer Responses: Motivations for the Brand Avoidance Relationship 4. Brand Flings: When Great Brand Relationships Are Not Made to Last 5. Examining Childhood Consumption Relationships 6. Mental Accounting in Consumer-Brand Relationships Part II: Understanding Consumer-Brand Relationship Bonds: Brand Love and Other Strength Indicators 7. Love Actually?: Measuring and Exploring Consumers' Brand Love 8. Brand Love: Interpersonal or Parasocial Love Relationships? 9. Brand Relationship Quality - Conceptualization and Measurement: Results of a Cross-Industry Study in the German Consumer Market 10. Brand Forgiveness: How Close Brand Relationships Influence Forgiveness 11. Relationships Are Complicated: On Construct Validity when Consumer-Brand Relationships are Systems Part III: How Goals and Identity Drive Consumers' Relationships with their Brands 12. This Store Just Gets Me!: Customer Chemistry and its Role in Identity Construction 13. Beyond Relationship: Metaphor Transfer and Beyond 14. Teenagers' Purposive Brand Relationships: From Social Filters to Shoulders to Lean On 15. Brands Can Be like Friends: Goals and Interpersonal Motives Influence Attitudes toward Preferred Brands Part IV: Managerial Applications and Extensions of Consumer-Brand Relationship Ideas 16. Firing Your Best Customers 17. On the Complexity of Managing Brands in a Social Media World 18. Corporate Identity and its Reflective Effect in Developing Brand Relationships 19. Brand Humanity: Transforming the Business of Building Brands Final Reflections: So Where Do We Go from Here?