| Abstract |
| Emotional associations formed in the relationships between the consumer and luxury brands can be approached via examining the roles these associations play when they account for the brand equity of the luxury brands. The present study is an exploratory examination on the effects a battery of emotional relationships exert upon the consumers` intention to participate in promotional activities and in communities built around the brand, which is a crucial part of the luxury brand`s equity, in regards to Korea`s burgeoning import auto market. Participants who completed the survey are professionals such as medical doctors, lawyers, accountants, and university professors. Included in the analyses are the top six automobile brands in sales(i.e., BMW, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Audi, and Volkswagen), and the scores that the respondents provided regarding the way they relate themselves to particular foreign car brands are analyzed and yield six different groups of emotional associations(i.e., affection, identification, indispensability, reliability, intimacy, and awe). The brand equity is measured with three variables that show the levels of the consumer`s participatory intentions toward each brand are analyzed in order to elicit the antecedent variables and their impact on the participation variables in the regression models. When the respondents are divided into two groups by the levels of brand knowledge(i.e., scores drawn from the respondent`s capability of correctly linking specific automobile brands with the corresponding corporate brands), consumers with higher brand knowledge show distinct patterns of influential variables, as they differentiate themselves from less knowledgeable consumers in terms of the influential antecedent variables accounting for the consumer`s intended participation. |
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| Key Words |
| consumer-brand emotional relationships, brand equity, Luxury brand, consumer participation, automobile brands, 소비자-브랜드 감성관계, 브랜드 자산, 명품브랜드, 참여의도, 자동차 브랜드 |
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