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Introduction
Attachment is an emerging area of research in the context of brand consumption. The concept of brand attachment has been borrowed from the interpersonal attachment literature (Thomson et al., 2005). The basic assumption of the interpersonal attachment theory is that human infants’ attachment behaviour evolves from how adult caregivers maintain proximity with infants, which subsequently shapes those infants’ future proximity maintenance behaviour with regard to attachment objects (Hazan and Shaver, 1994). So, attachment is a psychological system that functions to maintain proximity to an attachment object. Shimp and Madden (1988) have stated that individuals can have emotional relationships with consumption objects, and the structure of such consumer–consumption–object relationships is largely analogous to that of interpersonal love relationships as proposed by Sternberg (1986). Thomson et al. (2005) developed a psychometrically reliable scale to measure emotional brand attachment. The scale has three intercorrelated dimensions – affection, passion and connection. It is very important for marketers in any industrial sector to enhance the levels of consumers’ brand attachments, as brand attachment helps producers predict desirable marketing outcomes, such as conative brand loyalty and intentions to pay price premiums (Thomson et al., 2005).
Individuals tend to go to hospitals only in cases of illness, and under normal situations, they generally do not show a willingness to consume hospital services. Hence, it ought to be important to understand how consumers might develop strong brand attachments for hospital services, as the basic nature of healthcare provision is different from that of most other types of service industry.
Individuals normally visit hospitals in highly negative emotional states and suffering from stress, including mental distress, created by chronic or severe illnesses. Under the conditions of such stress, individuals will ardently seek care, and thus perceive hospitals as caregivers more prominently than they perceive other organizations in other sectors as providers of consumer goods and services. It is necessary to investigate emotional brand attachment in the hospital industry, as prior empirical research has shown that stress is a significant trigger of searches for attachment objects that act as safe havens because they are perceived to offer protection from stress (Thomson et al., 2005). Still, a review of the extant literature reveals that investigations of the concepts of emotional brand love...