ABSTRACT
The number of Internet users is rocketing, along with the number of online or Internet site
brands (hereafter, e-brands) on the Web.1 Although the Internet made its commercial
debut only a few years ago, by 1999 there were already more than 800 million pages of
content on the Web. This is largely attributed to low entry barriers on the Internet
whereby creation of a new Internet site brand is relatively inexpensive. Because of
extreme difficulty in attracting consumers to a particular site, however, much of the focus
of Web marketing has been directed toward acquiring consumers. Furthermore, it is diffi-
cult to keep customers once they are “acquired” for there are many factors that determine
if online experiences enhance the brand relationship (see the chapter “Effects of Visual
Consistency on Site Identity and Product Attitude,” this volume). Therefore, it is not
surprising to observe that many of the recent publications in this field heavily stress the
need for building a strong relationship with your customers (e.g., Carpenter, 2000; Hagel
& Singer, 1999; Newell, 2000). However, does it really matter in a strategic sense
(i.e., in increasing revenue or market share, etc.) to build and maintain a strong
consumer-brand relationship in an online setting? Although the consumer-brand
relationship displays an intuitive sense and has been advocated recently by some
academic researchers (e.g., Fournier, 1998), empirical evidence supporting the strategic
importance of the consumer-brand relationship is rather scarce (e.g., Fournier, 2000; Park
& Kim, 2001). Further, to the best of our knowledge, no empirical evidence has been
reported under the context of e-brands. The present research intendes to fill this gap.
