Types of Consumers' Identification, Their Sources and Their Influences on Positive Behaviors
Intensified competition among corporations and levelling up of their product quality have frequently lent an impetus to consumers' decision to buy goods in c...
Types of Consumers' Identification, Their Sources and Their Influences on Positive Behaviors
Intensified competition among corporations and levelling up of their product quality have frequently lent an impetus to consumers' decision to buy goods in consideration of their images toward brand identity of goods, manufacturing corporations or managers with the consumers' selves.
Consumers used to connect brand name of goods with their selves by means of brand association, sensing more identification with the brands which can better reflect their self-concept and, as a result, preferring to buy and finding allegiance to those which manifest stronger extent of identification.
The self-congruity theory which views that consumers favor the goods having similar images with their selves has developed to the theory of identification, having so far won much applause from the academic circles. Consumers have a liking for the brands that are identical with their self images after comparing their own images of selves to brand images in terms not only of individual but also of corporate brands.
Although lots of preceding studies have concluded that identification with individual and corporate brands has led to positive or affirmative behaviors of consumers (e.g. re-purchasing, recommendation to other customers, positive information of goods by word of mouth, etc.), systematic studies have not yet been satisfactorily conducted to prove if and how far identification with managers has positive effects on consumers' evaluation of goods and their positive behaviors. There are also very rare cases of studying directly the relationship among the three types of image identification (individual brand, corporate brand and manager).
It is thus the objective of the present paper to determine the sources of three types of brand identification and to examine the extent of impacts of these 3 kinds of identification upon consumers' positive behaviors concerned with individual brand-name goods.
In order to realize the objective of the study, hypotheses were set up on the basis of preceding studies and an empirical survey was carried out. To establish the concept of identification, reviewed were the preceding studies on the theory of identity and identification for each type.
Salience and attractiveness of individual brand identity were adopted as variables leading to individual brand identification, and to explore antecedents affecting the identification with corporate brand, inquires were made into association of corporate social responsibility and capability. Besides, reliability and entrepreneurship of corporate managers were selected as antecedents to attracting identification with business managers. In addition, an empirical analysis was performed under the assumption that identification with corporate brand and corporate manager would have certain influence upon identification with individual brand and positive behaviors, and identification with individual brand could induce positive behavioral effects.
From the empirical analysis, it was made known that following hypotheses could be adopted: that is, salience and attractiveness of individual brand's identity act positively to promote identification with individual brands; association of corporate's ability and activities with social responsibility affect positively for consumers to identify themselves with corporations; and consumers' reliability on managers and spirit of enterprisers exert affirmative influence upon promoting identification with managers. Furthermore, those hypotheses were also adopted that identification with corporate brands and managers functions positively to promote identification with individual brands and that consumers' identification with individual brand and managers has direct effect on their positive behaviors. The assertion, however, that identification with corporations could exercise direct impact upon positive behaviors of consumers was rejected by the empirical study. Meanwhile, it became evident that consumers' identification with corporate brand promotes consumers' positive behaviors by means of identification with individual brand. By thus, the assumption that identification with corporations would directly quicken positive behaviors of consumers was rejected.
Thanks to theoretic contributions of this study, it was brought to light that identification with individual brand has direct influence upon stimulating positive behaviors of consumers, while identification with corporate brand dose not exercise direct influence upon affirmative behavior of consumers but exercises, instead, indirect influence through identification of individual brand.
From the managerial viewpoint, the current study implies that business managers are expected to carry out communication activities to let consumers know about reliability and enterprising spirit of the managers and to continue to intensify consumers' interest in the service for their products as well as in brand identity by keeping on watching, publicizing and managing changes in their business entities. Corporations are also solicited to establish and realize public relation strategies on the basis of solid and organic observational works of consumers' context, behavior and motive for their consumption activities in addition to continuing investment in their works with social responsibility.
It should be noted, however, that this study lacks trace-up surveys of changes in association with consumers due to control of exogenous variables such as difference in culture of consumers and marketing operations of corporations. Supplementary studies are therefore required in the future to cope with limitations of this study which draws its conclusion from limited number of surveys by questionnaires.