MARKETING 3.0 IS CONSUMER BRANDING RELATIONSHIPS

A scientific review has confirmed that consumer relationship building is significantly essential in the marketing 3.0 era. In addition, marketing 3.0 boosted the study between relationships and brands.

Nowadays, as the markets change and consumers try to acquire those brands that fulfill their innermost needs, special attention needs to place on this evolving concept: consumer-brand relationships.

A recent scientific review carried out by researchers in Spain explained that Marketing 3.0 (“values-driven era”) emerged in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, particularly since 21st-century society has been changing rapidly. As a result, Marketing 3.0 seeks to deal with the present, ongoing globalization challenges that companies face.

In particular, the model’s core principles highlight the need to care for customers not as mere consumers but as sophisticated and multi-dimensional human beings. In fact, the researchers confirmed that consumers prefer those brands that enable them to primarily fulfill their deeper needs for social, economic, and environmental justice. Hence, the emergence of the Marketing 3.0 paradigm is considered one of the most influential causes of why the study of consumer-brand relationships is growing.

Per this model, brands are required to actively position themselves to have respect and admiration. With this regard, differentiation should extend beyond product or service attachment. In other words, companies' differentiation strategy should aim to connect the brand to a specific set of potential emotional benefits that it promises to provide to the consumers. The stronger the emotional response, the stronger the brand's effect on consumers.

Given these points, the team of researchers strongly recommends that in this era, companies consider emotional connections to build and manage sustainable brands for an extended period. In doing so, “brand love” and “consumer engagement” are two key areas that have a particular connection with emotions and should be highly considered in the application of this concept.

This is yet another scientific research proving the importance of consumer emotional connections and relationships in brand building.

Original Study: Martinez-Caraballo, N., 2017. Consumer-Brand Relationships under the Marketing 3.0 Paradigm: A Literature Review. Frontiers in Psychology 8, 4. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00252