Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE credits
Consumer marketing scholars keenly emphasize a proposed paradigm shift toward interactive
relationships and lived brand experiences. Yet, little has been done to investigate the link
between the two. Until now. This study is an attempt to measure the effects of lived brand
experiences on consumers’ perceived relationship with a brand, through testing an
academically established brand relationship quality model onto the concept of experiential
event marketing.
Susan Fournier’s (2000) brand relationship quality scale was chosen as the construct to be
tested in the experiential event marketing context. It was through a theoretical argumentation
hypothesized that the experiential event intervention would produce positive direct effects
within the scale, but that these would decline with time. This was consequently tested through
a repeated measurement study, set at an experiential food truck event hosted by the Swedish
FMCG brand Santa Maria. Respondents were to rank their perceived brand relationship
quality with the brand on three different occasions; directly before, directly after, and two
weeks after being exposed to the experiential event. This way, not only the immediate effect,
but also the effect over time, could be measured.
It could be concluded that all but one constructs produced positive direct effects, but only half
of them were significant. In all cases but one this effect declined significantly when being
measured two weeks afterwards, and went in several cases back at approximately the same
level as in the initial measurement. These findings have important implications for both
academics and practitioners. Most notably, we argue that the link between lived brand
experiences in form of typical FMCG experiential events and strengthened longer-term brand
relationship quality can be invalidated.
2017. , p. 73
Experiential Event Marketing, Brand Relationship Quality, FMCG, Offline Marketing, Brand Experiences