On the run for value: exploring the relevance of consumer goals for consumer relationships on brand flagship platforms

Abstract Brand Flagship Platforms (BFPs) serve as a strategic tool for manufacturer brands to strengthen customer relationships by offering digital benefits beyond product purchases. This research advances the emerging literature on BFPs by examining how five consumer goals (commercial exchange, social exchange, self-improvement, epistemic empowerment, and creative empowerment) affect brand attachment and purchase intention in the sports context. The results show that commercial exchange and epistemic empowerment exert significant positive effects on purchase intention. Social exchange, as a higher-order goal, is the only consumer goal that exhibits a substantial mediation effect on purchase intention via brand attachment. Furthermore, the analyses of four leading sports-related BFPs reveal that the consumer goals most effective in fostering brand attachment and purchase intention (epistemic empowerment and social exchange) are also prominently reflected in the platforms’ feature sets. By contrast, features supporting self-improvement are widely implemented, despite this goal showing no meaningful impact on brand attachment or purchase intention. These findings provide actionable insights for designing user-oriented BFPs and underscore the importance of aligning platform features with consumer goals. Overall, this research enriches both the theoretical and managerial understanding of BFPs as a marketing instrument.