With competition among hotel brands intensifying more than ever before, there has been a burgeoning interest in the hospitality industry on the topic of brand love. However, progress of brand love research in hotel context has been limited and investigation on antecedents of brand love has mainly focused on affective and relational aspects, while neglecting cognitive aspects of brand love. Therefore, the objective of this research was to illuminate the importance of brand love's cognitive aspect by identifying cognitive brand loyalty as a necessary component of brand love in hotel context. In addition, present research suggests that by inducing cognitive engagement among customers, hotel brands can attain cognitive brand loyalty from customers, which in turn derives brand love. To achieve the research objective, a questionnaire with items measuring brand love, cognitive brand loyalty and two aspects of cognitive engagement, cognitive attention and cognitive absorption, was distributed to 300 individuals through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Brand love was measured with scale adapted from Carroll and Ahuvia (2006), cognitive brand loyalty was measured using items introduced by Back and Parks (2003), and cognitive engagement elements were measured using items developed by So, King and Sparks (2014). In analyzing the data, structural equation modeling method was used. The findings of the study indicate that the effect of cognitive brand loyalty on brand love is significant and that the relationship between cognitive attention and cognitive brand loyalty is also positive and significant. However, the relationship between cognitive absorption and cognitive brand loyalty was positive only at a marginally significant level. As a result, the indirect effect of cognitive attention on brand love was positive and significant yet, the indirect effect of cognitive absorption on brand love was insignificant. This study enriches the brand love literature’s spectrum by illuminating the importance of brand love’s cognitive aspect. However, it is important to note that the focus is not necessarily on the cognitive processing or the standards, but on the cognitive engagement experience. In addition, because customers generally process information most heavily during the booking process, present research brings out managerial implications for hotel brands to direct more customers to their own brand website rather than the online-travel-agency( OTA) website. For instance, the results of present research illustrate that price discount or additional amenity are not enough to develop brand love. Rather, hotels should provide loyalty members who book directly through brand sites with more enjoyable, creative, and relevant to self-room shopping experience.

• Min-Jung Shin(University of Houston, U.S.A.)
• Ki-Joon Back(Ph.D., University of Houston, U.S.A.)