Consumers in the pews: Exploring the relationship between consumption experience and emotional brand attachment in a megachurch context.

摘要

Despite decades of explosive growth, a revolutionary value proposition that has effectively redefined the church brandscape, billions of dollars in annual revenue, and record numbers of consumers year after year, the "megachurch"---the brand label for an entrepreneurial class of Protestant churches with a sustained weekly attendance of 2,000 or more---has gone largely unremarked in business scholarship. As a first step toward bridging this gap in knowledge, the researcher explored the entrepreneurial aspects of megachurch life, with emphasis on the relationship between megachurch consumption experience and the emotional brand attachment of consumers in the pews. To determine the strength and direction of that relationship, the study examined the nexus between the independent variables representing consumption emotions and a single criterion variable representing emotional brand attachment through the frame of multivariate correlational statistics. To collect the necessary research data, survey instruments were administered to a nonrandom convenience sample (N = 153) of megachurch consumers, the study's unit of analysis. Illuminated through statistical analysis, the research data revealed significant bivariate correlations (p .001) between positive consumption emotions and emotional brand attachment, with the subscales for excitement ( r = .63), contentment (r = .58), and joy (r = .56) topping the list of correlates. Statistical tests were also conducted to establish which combination of consumption emotions (i.e., independent variables) best predicts emotional brand attachment, the criterion variable. A Fisher's F-test demonstrated that a regression model comprised of the three consumption emotions above, plus the subscale for surprise, was significant overall, F(4, 145) = 34.12, p .001. The model explained nearly half (48.5%) of the variance in the criterion variable as well. In addition, the study recommended future research on the typology of consumption experience; the design and staging of brand experiences in the nonprofit sector; defining and managing brand equity in the experience economy; the experiential sources of brand attachment; the relationship between consumer experiential value and brand resonance, loyalty, and evangelism; the archetypal/psychoevolutionary foundations of consumer behavior; brand monotropy; and the consumption communities spawned by nonprofit experiential brands---among other lines of inquiry.