Brand addiction: brand characteristics and psychological outcomes

Purpose
This paper aims to empirically test the influence of brand characteristics on brand addiction, as well as the consumers’ behaviors caused by this construct.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopts a Web-based self-completion survey by achieving a total of 529 completed surveys. Then, structural equation modeling has been employed by using SPSS AMOS.

Findings
Results highlighted how the brand characteristics of self-expressiveness, innovativeness and authenticity have a positive influence on brand addiction; brand addiction leads consumers to feel emotions of irritability and to adopt obsessive and compulsive behaviors toward the brand.

Research limitations/implications
Even if the choice of using a survey’s sample composed of students attending an Italian University ensures good internal validity of research (owing to the homogeneous character), the results are not generalizable (except for this population group).

Practical implications
The study identified two different spheres of brand addiction (one connected to the brand’s characteristics and the other to the consumers’ psychological-behavioral outcomes), along with possible strategies firms could adopt to strengthen the possibilities to transform their customers into addicted ones and to avoid/reduce the negative consequences deriving from brand addiction.

Originality/value
The paper provides a response to the call for more studies into the brand addiction analysis by empirically testing possible antecedents and outcomes, thus enriching the existing quantitative research focused on this concept.