A few relationships reflect your life theme,which is the core theme (or themes)
of your life. A life theme is deeply rooted in personal history and is often difficult
to verbalize because it is so fundamental to you that it is often ‘buried’ in the
subconscious (e.g. being free versus not being free).
Life projectsfluctuate more than life themes in accordance with changes in
circumstances, and life cycle and relationships are also influenced by the
construction, maintenance and dissolution of key roles in life. A life project relates
to the most significant choices in our lives – what do we choose as our education,
profession – and family priorities.
The most practical relationships are the ones spurred by current concernsand
they are directed toward completion of tasks in everyday life. An example could
be your hairdresser, the employees at your child’s daycare facility and so on.^5
Besides providing psychological meaning, relationships apply socio-cultural as
well as relational meaning to the ones engaged in them.
- Socio-cultural meaningis linked with changes in our life conditions. Socio-
cultural meaning can be divided into five broad socio-cultural contexts
(age/cohort, life cycle, gender, family/social network, and culture) which all
influence how participants approach relationships. Relationships change as
life does – think about college graduation, becoming a parent, getting ready
for retirement, and so on. Life falls into different eras and so do relationships. - Relational meaningof relationships deals with the fact that all relationships are
part of a network of other relationships. The nature of one individual relationship
is thereby influenced by the fact that it is part of a jigsaw puzzle of other relation-
ships fitting the requirements of the person having the relationship.
Any relationship is further affected by contextualinfluences. In that sense, rela-
tionships grow with us, adjust to our changing lives and influence the changes in
our lives as well. In other words, relationships develop over the course of time and
are constituted of a series of repeated exchanges between the relationship partners.
In that sense, relationships are process phenomena, constantly changing.
In sum, relationships add and structure meaning in our lives. Remember that the
meaning is of a psychological, socio-cultural and relational nature. Furthermore,
relationships never stand still and are influenced by an infinite number of
contextual factors.
Relationships take place between human beings. But since people tend to
endow brands with human-like personalities, the characteristics of a relationship
can be applied to brands as well. How this complex notion is conceptualized in the
world of brand management will be explained in the next section.
Core theme: the brand relationship theory
Through extensive research into three female informants’ lived experiences with
brands Fournier was able to prove that brands can and do serve as viable rela-
tionship partners in the sense that they are endowed with human personality
158 Seven brand approaches