ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 Relationship Stages and Consumption Patterns: Variations in Object Attachment and Importance of the Brand Maria Sääksjärvi, Hanken- Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration Ryszard Kedzior, Hanken- Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration Relationship Stages and Consumption Patterns: Variations in Object Attachment and Importance of the Brand Maria Sääksjärvi Ryszard Kedzior HANKEN – Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration This paper presents a conceptualization of relationship stages and links it to object attachment and the importance of brands. The relationship cycle refers to intimate relationships and is proposed to consist of four stages: single life, infatuation, committed relationship, and dissolution. Each stage is consumer-perceived rather than actual, and is signified by a distinct combination of object attachment levels, in which the importance of brands also varies. These fluctuations are proposed to be driven by consumers’ need to communicate or maintain their self-identity throughout the different stages. [to cite]: Maria Sääksjärvi and Ryszard Kedzior (2006) ,"Relationship Stages and Consumption Patterns: Variations in Object Attachment and Importance of the Brand", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 33, eds. Connie Pechmann and Linda Price, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 334-335. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/12272/volumes/v33/NA-33 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.