Work with me or work for me: The effect of brand roles depends on implicit theories of self‐change

Abstract

Consumer‐brand relationships are important predictors of consumption, but the psychology surrounding the different roles brands occupy within these relationships is not fully understood. Three experiments and one field study investigate how preferences for two of these brand roles, partner and servant, depend on consumers' implicit theories of self‐change. Counter to what prior literature might suggest, findings show that consumers who believe that self‐traits are relatively malleable (incremental theorists) and fixed (entity theorists) prefer partner and servant brands, respectively. Results demonstrate that a partner brand signals an equal effort by both the consumer and the brand, whereas a servant brand signals less effort by the consumer and more effort by the brand. The relatively greater consumer effort signals by partner (vs. servant) brands align with the effort beliefs associated with consumers' implicit theories, thereby mediating preferences. Findings are demonstrated across different product categories and samples (Taiwan and US). The focus on dyadic effort signals of brand roles in consumer‐brand relationships, and the resulting interactive effect with implicit theories, provide novel contributions to theory and practice.

Linking customer mindsets, brand engagement, and citizenship behavior: the moderating role of brand trust

“…First, customer citizenship behavior is significantly higher for growth-(vs. fixed-) mindset customers. This aligns with the findings of previous studies that found that a growth mindset significantly impacts positive behaviors, such as value co-creation and benevolence (Jain et al, 2023;Rai et al, 2023). This is possible because these consumers not only voluntarily provide constructive feedback to improve the service quality of the employees but are also more resilient and forgiving in case of service failures.…”

“…A growth mindset is inclined to participate in sustainable behaviors as it tends to learn more about the organization's activities and brands (Rai et al, 2023). For example, such customers are more likely to purchase green food as they are highly conscious of their health (Ahn, 2022).…”

“…Second, marketers could consider customer demographics and psychographics while creating customized advertisements. Younger customers are growth-oriented, whereas older ones are fixed (Rai et al, 2023). Consumers residing in collectivist cultures tend to possess a growth mindset, whereas consumers living in individualist cultures tend to have a fixed mindset (Hsieh et al, 2021).…”

“…Some studies have examined the relationship between mindsets and customers' prosocial behaviors, such as corporate social responsibility (Kim and Kim, 2023), sustainable hospitality (Rather et al, 2023) and green buying (Rahnama and Popkowski Leszczyc, 2022). Others have investigated the correlation of mindsets with brand favorability (McManus et al, 2020) and brand roles (Rai et al, 2023) (Table 1). Nevertheless, there is a noticeable gap in the literature regarding the association between customer mindsets and customer citizenship behavior (Japutra and Song, 2020;Nguyen and Chiu, 2023).…”