The domain adjustment problem in the context of product brands: does user-imagery allow a human-to-human comparison?

Abstract

Extant literature on self-image congruence has not yet come up with an answer to the question of whether the structure of traits describing individual personality differences is identical with the structure of attributes in terms of which consumers compare themselves to typical brand users. Providing a conceptual and methodological review of the literature, this paper applies a peer-rating, psycholexical approach to test the congruence between the structure of personality-trait lexicon of a brand user with the structure of personality lexicon of the natural language. Results of analyses of the personality lexicon structure reveal that typical brand users are described using fewer dimensions than human personality. The study concludes that personality scales developed on the basis of lexical material including the consumer context, and complying with the psycholexical methodology derived from human personality study, can be applied to self-image congruence research.

Five decades of self‐congruity in consumer behaviour research: A systematic review and future research agenda

“…Seven articles reported mixed-method studies employing both qualitative and quantitative research approaches to investigate selfcongruity (Cheng & Fountain, 2021;Gorbaniuk et al, 2021;Johnson et al, 2007).…”

“…Few of the articles used factor analysis for conceptualizing constructs. In the review corpus, nine articles reported multiple studies (e.g., Gorbaniuk et al, 2021).…”

“…Here, consumers who are conscious of their self‐image avoid brands that malign their image (Bosnjak, 2010). A study by Bosnjak and Rudolph (2008) showed that individuals finding inconsistency in the brand image with their self‐concept during self‐monitoring abandoned the brand to protect their self‐concept (Gorbaniuk et al, 2021).…”

“…These articles ( n = 31) mainly were the conceptualization of constructs related to self‐congruity (e.g., self‐expression) or psychometric scales development and validation. Seven articles reported mixed‐method studies employing both qualitative and quantitative research approaches to investigate self‐congruity (Cheng & Fountain, 2021; Gorbaniuk et al, 2021; Johnson et al, 2007).…”

“…The analysis of articles in the review corpus supported the convergence of research towards clothing brands (e.g., Lim et al, 2020; Lou & Tse, 2021), personal accessories, for example, watches (Breberina et al, 2022), and sunglasses (Shimul & Phau, 2022). Few articles examined food and drinks brands (Breberina et al, 2022; Tezer et al, 2020), vehicles (Wijnands & Gill, 2020), cosmetics (Gorbaniuk et al, 2021), smartphones and laptops (Chieng et al, 2022), luxury goods (Eastman et al, 2021; Li, Zhang, et al, 2022), and other specific products, for example, green product (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2020), and electronic brands (Fastoso & González‐Jiménez, 2020). Consumer product research also included several other categories compared with consumer goods (Gorbaniuk et al, 2021) to conceptualize the self‐congruence model.…”