More than Just Words. How the Communication Style Adopted by Brands Affect their Relationships with Consumers
type: CreativeWork
description: The overall aim of this dissertation has been to examine how specific aspects of brand communication style affect the ways in which relationships between brands and consumers form and evolve. A central research question has guided this dissertation: How, when, and why does the style of communication employed by a brand affect consumer–brand relationships? I have addressed this question with three sets of empirical investigations. In the first project, I investigated how adopting an informal (vs. formal) communication style affects brand trust and demonstrated that using an informal style either have a positive or negative effect on brand trust, depending on whether consumers are familiar with the brand or not. In the second project, I investigated how humanizing a brand affects consumers’ propensity to reveal personal information to a brand. Results showed that the humanization of a brand decreases consumers’ propensity to reveal intimate information, because of higher embarrassment. In the third project, I investigated how the ease of reading a branded message affects consumer engagement with brands. Results showed that while the ease of reading a branded message increases consumer engagement with less exclusive brands, the same is not true for more exclusive one.
abstract: The overall aim of this dissertation has been to examine how specific aspects of brand communication style affect the ways in which relationships between brands and consumers form and evolve. A central research question has guided this dissertation: How, when, and why does the style of communication employed by a brand affect consumer–brand relationships? I have addressed this question with three sets of empirical investigations. In the first project, I investigated how adopting an informal (vs. formal) communication style affects brand trust and demonstrated that using an informal style either have a positive or negative effect on brand trust, depending on whether consumers are familiar with the brand or not. In the second project, I investigated how humanizing a brand affects consumers’ propensity to reveal personal information to a brand. Results showed that the humanization of a brand decreases consumers’ propensity to reveal intimate information, because of higher embarrassment. In the third project, I investigated how the ease of reading a branded message affects consumer engagement with brands. Results showed that while the ease of reading a branded message increases consumer engagement with less exclusive brands, the same is not true for more exclusive one.
author: Gretry, Anaïs
language: en
keywords: Consumer-Brand Relationships, Communication Styles, Digital, Business & economic sciences, Marketing, Sciences économiques & de gestion
license: http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
date published: 2017-05-08
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:49:34Z
provider: Université de Liège
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: ULiège - Université de Liège