Brand Love, Trust and Human Agency

The question

Companies often ask whether customers love their brand. They rarely ask who creates that love, or what it costs them.

Every brand promise is kept or broken by a person: the colleague who explains a decision, the account manager who answers at 5:40 p.m., the employee who posts, hosts or apologises. Brand love is built in moments like these. To understand it, we have to look at the people whose behaviour it depends on.

So this essay looks at two relationships: the one between a brand and its customers, and the one between a brand and its employees. The same test applies to both.

A relationship is worth caring about when it matters deeply to someone and still leaves them free to question it.

Why I came to this

I started with a practical question from social selling: how do you become known for work that helps people? Brand love asks what comes next. When does being useful become part of how someone sees themselves, what they value, or where they belong?

My own experience made the question personal. I have written publicly about using corporate language that didn't sound like me, posting because I felt I should, and checking engagement numbers too often.¹ That is what it can feel like to be asked to be the brand. If I shape everything around approval, what are people actually learning to trust?

Five words that get mixed up

Researchers describe brand love as more than a good feeling. It includes identity, emotional connection, passion and the expectation that the relationship will continue.² Trust, in a well-known definition, means being willing to be vulnerable, and it depends on whether you judge the other party to be capable, caring and honest.³ Warmth alone doesn't tell you any of that.

Marketing often treats these words as one thing. But a brand can be loved and still not trusted. It can be trusted without being loved. And people can stay loyal simply because leaving is hard.

What the evidence says

Brand love is appealing because it seems to link emotion to loyalty. The research is more cautious than the promise.

One influential study found that brand love explained self-reported loyalty and advocacy well. Its authors also noted that it captured one moment in time, and they called for longer-term and experimental studies.² A 2026 study of 1,554 US consumers found that brand love was linked to purchase intentions but only weakly to how much people actually bought.⁴

These studies used different samples and measures, so neither cancels the other. Together they warn us not to assume that affection means repeat behaviour. The sensible approach is to ask what the relationship means to people, watch what they actually do, and look separately at what keeps them there. A useful relationship that stays emotionally quiet can be a good outcome.

Where the brand actually lives

For customers, a brand often lives in people. One study found that loyalty to a salesperson and loyalty to the company are different things, and that the first can put the second at risk.⁵ That study looked at manufacturers' sales firms, so it doesn't prove the same holds everywhere. The lesson still travels: a customer's feeling often attaches to a person, and people can leave.

A single interaction can involve three relationships:

This is where employee behaviour comes in. Research on internal branding suggests employees express a brand's values through how they act, and that this works when they are committed to those values, not just following rules.^{6 7} Employees can become real brand champions when leaders give them good reasons. A brand that needs its people to perform enthusiasm is relying on something it hasn't earned.

The cost of performed feeling

The sociologist Arlie Hochschild studied what happens when feelings become part of the job. People manage their expressions to create the emotion their employer wants, and the gap between what they show and what they feel carries a cost.⁸ Brand love adds a twist. A company wants customers to feel something, and often asks employees to show that feeling first.

Here is a simple test. Can an employee still sound warm when they are allowed to say, “I can't promise that,” or “I wouldn't defend this decision”? If so, the warmth is believable. If only a script holds it up, customers will eventually notice the gap, and the employee will notice it sooner.

The economist Albert Hirschman described three responses to a failing organisation: leave, speak up, or stay loyal.⁹ Loyalty only tells you something when speaking up is possible. Where criticism isn't welcome, quiet customers and quiet employees look just like happy ones.

Care, reliance and the right to disagree

Self-determination theory makes a helpful point: autonomy means acting by choice, not acting alone.¹⁰ Being empowered doesn't mean doing everything yourself. It can mean knowing who to ask, understanding the advice you get, and keeping a real say. That holds for customers, and for the colleagues serving them.

Two older ethical texts add questions, not proof. Pirkei Avot 5:16 contrasts love that depends on something with love that lasts. That prompts me to ask what keeps professional care going when there's nothing in it for us.¹¹ Qur'an 4:58 says that what is entrusted to us must be returned to those it belongs to. That prompts me to ask what we owe people who trust us with their time, information or confidence.¹² Neither text shows a marketing effect, and neither justifies demanding unconditional loyalty to a company. They help me ask what a relationship requires of whoever holds more power.

This matters even more when AI is involved. A reply can sound caring and still give someone poor reasons to rely on it. Researchers on trust in automation argue that confidence should match what a system can actually do.¹³ The same goes for a human representative reading from a script they aren't allowed to question.

The Affection and Agency Map

Look at any relationship along two separate lines. Affection is how much emotional meaning the person describes. Agency is how much real opportunity they have to understand, influence, question and leave. The map works for customers, community members and employees alike.

This is a thinking tool, not a validated scale. Its goal is to widen room for agency. No one has to push every person toward stronger affection.

For employees, watch the bottom-right box. A team that says it is proud of the brand but is afraid to raise a concern is not proof of brand love. It is a warning sign.

Five practical moves

1. Start with a real moment. Pick a question, a handover, an invitation or a complaint, and ask what the person is trying to get done.
2. Turn the promise into behaviour. If you promise clarity, explain a hard trade-off. If you promise shared values, name a decision those values limit. If you promise care, say who responds when something goes wrong.
3. Make room for contribution. Let customers and employees adapt an explanation, improve an agenda or teach each other.
4. Pair warmth with accountability. Say what is known, what is promised, who owns the follow-up, and how someone can challenge an outcome.
5. Keep three kinds of evidence apart. Record what people say the experience means, what they can now do, and what they later choose. Treat reach and reactions as extras, not substitutes.

Six questions worth sitting with

1. What does this relationship help someone do, express or become?
2. Is it with a person, an organisation, a community, or a mix?
3. Where does it leave room for joy, recognition and shared memories?
4. What would make it safe for customers and employees to disagree, ask for help or change their mind?
5. Could convenience, habit or a lack of alternatives explain what we call loyalty?
6. What would we still owe someone if they stopped praising or choosing us?

What makes a brand worth caring about

I come back to the problem of sounding like myself. Being visible invites people to form an expectation of us, and every later interaction gives them a reason to keep it or change it. Over time, something useful becomes familiar, and something familiar can become meaningful.

There is room in that for warmth, delight and ambition. I want professional life to have those things. I also want everyone involved to keep their own judgement.

The strongest version of brand love I can defend is a relationship that matters without claiming ownership of the person who cares, whether that is a customer or the colleague who keeps the promise.

People should be able to take the knowledge, keep the friendships, question the organisation and decide what happens next.

If they choose to come back, there is something worth understanding.

Method and limits

This is a research-led reading of published work and my own public writing. It is not a systematic review or a study with participants. The research covers consumer identity, sales loyalty, motivation, internal branding, community and automation, and findings from one setting don't automatically apply to another. The map and the practical moves are my own proposals. I haven't invented any audience feelings or measured results.

Sources

1. van Vliet, D. Human Visibility / Personal Branding & Social Selling. Public practice record. ↩
2. Batra, R., Ahuvia, A. & Bagozzi, R. P. (2012). Brand Love. Journal of Marketing, 76(2), 1–16. doi:10.1509/jm.09.0339. ↩
3. Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H. & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709–734. doi:10.5465/amr.1995.9508080335. ↩
4. White, J. B., Bellman, S., Beal, V., Michelon, A. & Sharp, B. (2026). International Journal of Market Research. doi:10.1177/14707853261459215. Abstract only consulted. ↩
5. Palmatier, R. W., Scheer, L. K. & Steenkamp, J.-B. E. M. (2007). Customer Loyalty to Whom? Journal of Marketing Research, 44(2), 185–199. doi:10.1509/jmkr.44.2.185. ↩
6. Burmann, C. & Zeplin, S. (2005). Building brand commitment. Journal of Brand Management, 12(4), 279–300. doi:10.1057/palgrave.bm.2540223. ↩
7. Morhart, F. M., Herzog, W. & Tomczak, T. (2009). Brand-specific leadership. Journal of Marketing, 73(5), 122–142. doi:10.1509/jmkg.73.5.122. ↩
8. Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart. University of California Press. ↩
9. Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Harvard University Press. ↩
10. Ryan, R. M. & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. Full text (PDF). ↩
11. Pirkei Avot 5:16; Bartenura's commentary. Sefaria. ↩
12. Qur'an 4:58; Ibn Kathir's commentary. Quranic Arabic Corpus · Tafsir Ibn Kathir. ↩
13. Lee, J. D. & See, K. A. (2004). Trust in Automation. Human Factors, 46(1), 50–80. doi:10.1518/hfes.46.1.50_30392. ↩