Summary: | Family business research is a rapidly growing topic of interest. Nevertheless there has been little research explicitly dedicated to the connection between consumers’ and family businesses. This paper gives insight about the influence of the family business brand image and consumers’ purchase intentions. Hereby it was taken into consideration that low-involvement and product knowledge can influence this path. This was done by a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. The findings showed that consumers associate family business with high quality, passion, heritage, traditions, small companies and craftsmanship. In general these associations do not influence consumers buying behavior. However, specific target groups showed different results. Implications focus on using the family business as a secondary brand image and family businesses should deal with caution when using their origin as a primary brand image.
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