From Store Attributes To Emotional Bonds: Understading The Mediating Effect Of Perceived Value On Brand Love And Emotional Attachment

This study traces how the shoppers see and feel inside a store merchandise quality, layout and ambience, staff warmth, and price fairness can grow into durable emotional bonds with a brand. We position perceived value as the missing link: when the setting signals that customers are getting more than they give, positive feelings move beyond satisfaction toward brand love and emotional attachment. Using a cross-sectional survey of retail shoppers, we estimated a mediation model with structural equation modeling after confirming reliability and both convergent and discriminant validity, and checking for common method bias. The findings show a clear pattern: functional cues (quality, fair pricing) and affective cues (atmosphere, human touch) jointly elevate perceived value, and that uplift, in turn, strengthens brand love and attachment more than any single cue on its own. For practice, align the basics (reliable quality, transparent pricing) with sensory and interpersonal design, and train frontline teams to translate those cues into a clear sense of value that reliably nurtures brand love and emotional attachment.