Empathic Brands

Abstract

In a world where brands are becoming ever more ubiquitous, competition is increasing, and consumers are, every day, more demanding, creating and maintaining powerful, emotional, and reciprocal relationships between brands and their stakeholders is no longer just an ambition, but an imperative call. This can potentially be accomplished by focusing on a brand purpose that consumers identify with and can be stimulated through the creation of unique and distinct experiences and by the development of interpersonal feelings, such as empathy. This chapter proposes a new model for measuring and evaluating brand empathy. For this study, the automotive sector was chosen to test the proposed model. Through a quantitative study, divided into two periods, the awareness of the automotive brands was evaluated, after which the proposed model was applied. This investigation concluded that the majority of automotive industry are characterized by consumers as not very empathetic, as well as the advertising campaigns created by these brands.