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Introduction
The concept of consumers' identification with brands or companies has been well reported and discussed in the literatures of marketing, consumer behaviour and psychology. Consumers can also identify with what have been termed "brand communities" ([12] Cova, 1997). [36] Muniz and O'Guinn (2001, p. 413) have argued that these "become a common understanding of a shared identity", while [30] McAlexander et al. (2002, p. 38) extend the concept in asserting that "communities tend to tend to be identified on the basis of commonality or identification among their members". While some studies have investigated single and specific targets of identification, none has investigated the possibility that consumer-company identification and consumer-community identification exert independent and equivalent impacts on relevant loyalty-related outcomes, and if so to what extent. The research question to be addressed is therefore: how important are identification with the brand owner and identification with the community, respectively, in building loyalty in a brand community? Accordingly, this paper develops and tests a theoretical model to explain the impact of identification constructs on loyalty-related outcomes. An understanding of this process is an important input to strategic decisions concerning the relative allocation of effort to the fostering of consumers' identification with the company, with a brand community or with both. An informed strategy will be capable of exploiting the full potential of the customer base to spread positive referrals and activate other tangible actions, to the benefit of the company and its products ([22] Gremler and Brown, 1999).
Furthermore, defining and measuring an "identification" effect necessarily entails placing it within a broader conceptual framework. It is not simply a matter of establishing the existence of a causal connection between brand loyalty and identification with a brand owner or brand community (or any other theoretically and managerially relevant construct). It is further necessary to understand which variables play a mediating role in this relationship. In our own study, attention will be focused on two of those other constructs: brand trust and brand affect. These variables were chosen because they perform a central and significant role in studies of loyalty and the relational commitment that is its primary expression ([11] Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001; [49] Venetis and Ghauri, 2004; [6] Ball et al. , 2004; [20] Esch et al.