The Role of Sociodemographic Characteristics on the Journey from Brand Experience to Brand Love and Loyalty-Porto

Development of an emotional attachment to the brand is a key issue in brand management, making constructs such as brand experience, brand satisfaction, brand love, and brand loyalty one of the most addressed topics in marketing research, specifically, the destinations brands, such as of city of Porto. Within this debate, special attention is given to sociodemographic characteristics and the role they have within this journey. Namely we address the impact of gender, age, educational qualifications, marital status, and residence on brand experience, brand satisfaction, brand love, and brand loyalty. Our findings indicate that these characteristics do play the role. Positive brand experience-affecting factors include being female relative to male, being older (the higher the impact), and being a tourist relative to not being a tourist. Non-tourists (those who reside in Portugal or Porto) have an advantage over tourists in terms of brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. Age and gender have also shown importance. Marriage status and level of education were important components of brand loyalty. Gender had no effect on brand love, but age (which rises with maturity), education level (which rises with credentials), and marital status (being married or widowed) all had favorable impacts.