Our research follows the behavioural science research paradigm. Based on modern psychological and sociological theories, central questions of marketing are investigated. People in their role as senders and receivers of information are at the centre of our research interest. The aim is to investigate the affective and cognitive processes that are responsible for the reception, processing, storage and action of people in such a way that it is possible to derive concrete recommendations for action for marketing practice.

Our research focuses on the central questions of brand and communication policy. For example, we investigate how strong brand loyalty, including brand love, develops and what marketing can do to establish it. In the field of communication, for example, we are driven by the question of how communication must be organised today so that it is still perceived at all under the difficult conditions of immense communication overload.

Our empirical research is characterised by a variety of methods. Both qualitative (e.g. qualitative interviews, protocols of thinking aloud) and quantitative (e.g. experiments, survey studies) methods are used to collect data. Depending on the research question, instrumental methods (e.g. eye-tracking, skin resistance measurement) are also used. Depending on the specific problem, the following methods are used to analyse data: univariate and multivariate analysis of variance, linear mixed models, regression analyses, factor analysis (P and Q form) and structural equation models.

When researching brand love, the use of theories from interpersonal (often romantic) love research is standard. To date, however, there has been no detailed scientific and analytical comparison of brand love and interpersonal love. The question of whether the two constructs are sufficiently similar has therefore remained unanswered to this day. Based on dimensional emotion theories, brand love was therefore compared with interpersonal romantic love, interpersonal friendship and brand equity. In an initial qualitative study, respondents were asked about the causes, effects and reasons for their relationships with people and brands. Building on this, a second instrumental study was conducted to measure the intensity and positivity (valence) of the emotions experienced when in contact with a beloved partner, best friend, beloved brand or a liked brand. The inner arousal was measured by means of skin resistance measurement and valence by means of facial muscle activity measurement, among other things. The results of the two studies show that brand love and interpersonal love sometimes differ considerably, but that there are also similarities. For example, the emotional intensity of brand love is lower than that of romantic love, whereas there are no differences in valence. However, it is interesting to note that brand love has the same emotional intensity as a best friend. The valence of the emotion experienced in the context of brand love is even more positive than that of the emotion experienced in the context of friendship with the best friend (cf. Langner/Schmidt/Fischer, 2015, "Is it really love? A comparative investigation of the emotional nature of brand and interpersonal love," Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 32, No. 6, pp. 624 - 634).