Emotional Anchoring: Explaining Emotional Persistence in Social Media Marketing
Keywords:
emotional anchoring, social media marketing, emotional memory, consumer–brand relationships, narrative transportation, identity-based processingAbstract
Social media has transformed marketing communication into an emotionally intensive environment where brands compete not only for attention but also for enduring psychological relevance. Although prior research has extensively examined customer engagement, emotional branding, narrative transportation, customer experience, and brand attachment, limited attention has been devoted to explaining how emotionally meaningful social media experiences remain influential long after direct interaction has ended. This conceptual article addresses this theoretical gap by introducing Emotional Anchoring, a higher-order psychological embedding mechanism that explains how emotionally resonant digital experiences become integrated into consumers’ memory structures, identity narratives, and relational perceptions toward brands. Drawing on insights from emotional memory theory, identity-based processing, symbolic consumption, emotional branding, customer engagement, narrative transportation, and relationship marketing, the study develops an integrative conceptual framework linking emotional experiences with long-term relational and behavioral outcomes. The proposed framework identifies key antecedents, core psychological mechanisms, reinforcing conditions, and outcomes associated with emotional persistence in social media environments. The study contributes to marketing theory by extending existing explanations of consumer–brand relationships beyond engagement and attachment, while providing a foundation for future empirical research on emotional persistence, digital consumer behavior, and AI-mediated marketing ecosystems.
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