The role of actual, ideal, and ought self‐congruence in the consumption of hedonic versus utilitarian brands

Abstract

To emotionally attach consumers to a brand and inspire brand loyalty, marketers often target the brand personality towards the consumer's actual or ideal self. The self is not limited to its actual and ideal dimension, however, and motivation to approach a desired self may vary depending on the consumer's personality. Thus, the current research is the first to link self-congruence to self-discrepancy theory by incorporating the ought self into the self-congruence framework and taking into account self-discrepancies as potential moderators of the self-congruence effect.Additionally, hedonic brand nature is discussed as important condition for self-congruence and self-discrepancies exhibiting their fullest effect. The conducted study focuses on how actual, ideal, and ought self-congruence influence emotional brand attachment and consequently brand loyalty. For brands of primary hedonic nature, findings confirm actual and ideal self-congruence as drivers of emotional brand attachment, which in turn increases brand loyalty, while ought self-congruence influences brand loyalty directly. Moreover, self-discrepancies moderate the described relations, albeit their effect is contrary to theory-based expectations. From these findings, the authors derive important implications for business practice and future research. K E Y W O R D Sbrand loyalty, brand nature, emotional brand attachment, ought self-congruence, self-discrepancy

Linking actual self-congruence, ideal self-congruence, and functional congruence to donor loyalty: the moderating role of issue involvement

“…Hence, if someone compares another's self-concept with his/her actual self-concept (i.e., one's own personality in the here and now), the result of this comparison process is called actual self-congruence. Conversely, if someone compares another's self-concept with his/her ideal self-concept (i.e., the person one would like to be), the result relates to the so-called ideal self-congruence (Huber et al 2018;Malär et al 2018).…”

“…Actual and ideal self-congruence positively influence consumer behavior because the higher perceived similarity (i.e., self-congruence) compels consumers to feel more consistency and harmony between themselves and the brand (Malär et al 2011). Consequently, actual and ideal self-congruence strengthen the relationship between consumers and a brand (Huber et al 2018;Japutra et al 2019), which results in an increase in brand loyalty (Hung et al 2019;Kang et al 2015).…”

“…Since previous consumer research has indicated that the effects of actual and ideal self-congruence depend on the considered context (see, e.g., Ahn et al 2013;Ekinci et al 2008;Huber et al 2018;Zhu et al 2019), the question arises whether these constructs have a determining role in the nonprofit organization sector context (i.e., donor behavior). Previous research regarding nonprofit organizations has concluded that donor behavior is driven by personal values (i.e., verifying personal norms) as well as by the need for self-enhancement (e.g., Konrath and Handy 2018;Ottoni-Wilhelm 2017).…”

“…Consumer psychology research has concluded that self-congruence and functional congruence positively influence individual behavior (e.g., brand loyalty) (see, e.g., Bauer et al 2006;Huber et al 2018;Choi and Reid 2016;Sirgy et al 1991). Self-congruence, which is symbolically driven, describes the perceived similarity between one's personality and the personality of an organization (see, e.g., Malär et al 2011;Zhu et al 2019).…”

Consumers Emotional Responses to Functional and Hedonic Products: A Neuroscience Research

“…Research on product adoption and consumption mainly argues that such emotional responses are processed differently by individuals according to the mainly hedonic or utilitarian/functional nature of the product they are evaluating ( Hoch and Ha, 1986 ; Batra and Ahtola, 1991 ; Kempf and Smith, 1998 ; Ren and Nickerson, 2019 ; Yang et al, 2020 ). Hedonic products refer to objects consumed mostly for affective or sensory fulfillment aim, while utilitarian products are connected to more functional and practical benefits ( Woods, 1960 ; Strahilevitz and Myers, 1998 ; Huber et al, 2018 ). Although this distinction is less than unequivocal ( Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982 ), there appears to be a consensus that a main utilitarian product affects differently cognition and emotions than a hedonic product ( Kempf, 1999 ).…”