The Role of Brand Romance in Customer Loyalty in Hotel Industry: The case of five and four-star hotels in Mazandaran province

Brand romance is an important construct in marketing. It refers to a potential mental state in response to the brand and is created based on a strong positive emotion, arousal, and the dominance of a brand in the subjective mind of the consumer. The aim of this study was to test the effect of brand romance on the four types of customer loyalty, including cognitive, emotional, conative and behavioral loyalty. In the qualitative section, participants were customers who were selected using purposive sampling based on the saturation principle. In the quantitative section, the statistical population included the travelers of five and four-star hotels in Mazandaran province. Members of the statistical population were distributed based on the stratified sampling method. Classes were determined based on the number of hotel rooms. Collected data were tested using Smart PLS software. The results showed that brand romance had a positive and significant effect on the four types of loyalty in the hotel industry. The highest effect was on cognitive loyalty and the lowest was on behavioral loyalty.