Brand management is becoming a discipline through which companies create, manage and foster relationships with customers. Brands need ambassadors to those who not only like the brand, but want its products with all their heart.  For those people who feel a deep connection to their brand, they become advocates, recommending and above all, get involved with that brand.  But can brand loyalty be compared to person-to-person relationships?  If so, how can this be leveraged in online environments where social graphs are becoming beacons of multifaceted connectivity?

A new study, “When consumers care about being treated fairly: The interaction of relationship norms and fairness norms,” from the University of Toronto and Duke University, says consumers’ relationships with brands are not all that different than relationships with people. Consumers link connections with brands in ways that mirror social relationships. The evaluation of the brand is heavily dependent on whether the brand adheres to or violates the implicit relationship agreement.

Pankaj Aggarwal, a marketing professor at the Rotman School of Management and the University of Toronto Scarborough, and Richard P. Larrick of Duke University, recently put this theory to the test.

For brands and marketers, understanding the difference between the kinds of relationship is crucial to making sure how brands can deal with consumers. The study results says a relationship based primarily on economic factors and the balance of inputs and outcomes, relationship based on caring, trust and partnership are vital for brands to succeed in long term. Walmart, for example, attracts customers based on price and value.

Consumer relationship with brands, both positive and negative, depends on how they relate to the brand in the first place, researchers said.

“Adverse outcomes happen sometimes. People are treated badly or a product fails,” says Aggarwal. “Marketers must understand the type of relationship that they have with the consumer so they can figure out how to make good that unfair outcome.”

In one of the study, Aggarwal and Larrick created a situation where the consumer didn’t get what they paid for and wasn’t rewarded for a mistake made by the brand. Consumers who are treated with respect and dignity after the mistake and those had a communal relationships responded well, possibly because consumers have a strong relationship with the brand. What matters is that each company has a strong relationship with the client and it reputation will grow faster than its competitors.

“In a nutshell, the type of relationship that consumers form with a brand influences what aspect of fairness they attend to and that in turn effects how they assess the brand when facing either fair or unfair outcomes,” explains Aggarwal.

Most customers want to have relationships with brands

A recent CEB survey that involved over 7,000 consumers worldwide found that consumers are overwhelmed by the massive information they’re exposed to by the Internet media and the choices they’re presented with, and in turn are making purchase decision differently than in the past.

Shared values are the main reason that consumers decide to have a relationship with a brand and once that relationship established consumers want to maintain that relationship.

The study, however, said that there is no correlation between the number of interactions of brands with a consumer and the probability that he or she will complete a purchase, make repeat purchases, or recommend the brand.

Speaking of brands, on the social media front, another report from the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business demonstrates that customer satisfaction for Facebook fell by a margin of 8 percent to just 61 percent last year when it comes to customer satisfaction. Google+, on the other hand, ranks more than Facebook largely due to its privacy features, better mobile experience and absence of advertising on the social site.