The Moderating Role of Market Mavens in Explaining the Impact of Brand Positioning Strategies on Brand Love
With the presence of increasingly similar products in the fashion apparel retail industry, the real challenge today is to steer marketing communication efforts in the direction of developing consumer-brand bonds that are interpersonal and simultaneously acknowledge the role of market mavens as strong external influencers in this regard. Hence, the primary area of focus this to analyze the relationship among three brand positioning strategies; feature, surrogate, and benefits brand positioning strategy with brand love, while investigating the effect of market mavens on brand love and brand positioning. Building onto the extant literature, for this study's purpose, a theoretical model is proposed and tested with survey data from 607 young consumers of private universities. All three brand positioning strategies show a significant relationship with brand love, which is moderated by an interpersonal influence of market mavens. However, the interaction effects of all three brand positioning strategies vary in strength. The study results also draw up a demographic profile of market mavens, suggesting that they are most likely to be female, well educated, slightly older consumers residing in metropolitan cities, thereby suggesting concrete, practical implications towards the end.