Self-brand

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Throughout the long history of consumer research, there has been much interest regarding how consumers choose which brand to buy and why they continue to purchase these brands. Self-branding describes the process in which consumers match their own self-concept with the images of a certain brand.

Contents

People engaged in consumption do not merely buy certain products to satisfy basic needs. In fact, consumer buying habits are at a much deeper level. Owning a certain brand can help consumers to express and build their own self-concept. [1] [2] [3] Specifically, consumers will often only purchase certain trademarks when he/she finds a match between the brand image (communicated through advertisement, design of retail shop, or even package design) and his/her own self-concept. Thereby, the value of a brand also depends on its ability to help consumer to build and create self-concept. [4]

Formation of connections

Based on self-congruity theory

The above explanation for self-branding can be summarized by Sirgy's self-congruity theory. [5] It is proposed that consumer behavior is partially determined by the similarity between consumers' psychological comparisons of the brand-user-image. This self-congruity affects consumption behavior of consumers through motives such as need for self-consistency (e.g. "I am a good student because I work hard to prepare for examinations and I always get good grades") and self-esteem. On the other hand, high self-congruity occurs when the consumers find appropriate match between their own self-image and the brand-image. Only high self-congruity would help consumers maintain and enhance self in a positive direction. [6] Further from the above notions, high self-congruity will lead to positive attitudes towards the brand and repeated purchase. [7]

Brand evaluation

Besides assisting consumer to choose which product and brand to buy, the matching process between self-concept and image of brand and product also determines how consumers evaluate the brand and product. When we say that a brand has a positive brand-image, it means that the brand has established some strong, favorable and unique associations with the consumer's self-image [8] (e.g. iPods have a strong and explicit image of being trendy, fashionable and high-tech, a combination of brand image that is unique and valued by young people). These strong, favorable and unique associations can be mainly divided into two parts. They are image of users and the psychological benefits experienced by the users in buying this particular brand or product. [9] Firstly, image of users means that when consumer evaluate the brand they will image the typical user of this particular brand and see whether they are similar to the typical user. Demographic and psychological profile of the typical user is usually a good source of information for consumer to make these comparisons. [7] (e.g. if someone perceived themselves as a trendy youngster and valued advanced technology, the chance that they will buy an iPod for their own use is very high). Secondly, psychological benefits experienced by consumers include increase recognition by the peer group (i.e. social approval) and expression of how one would like other people to see and think of oneself (i.e. personal expression). [8]

Constructing a self-concept

When the set of brand associations are linked or connected to the self, these associations can help consumers achieve certain goals. These goals include what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming. People are motivated to create a favorable and consistent self-identity based on self-enhancement (i.e. people over-emphasize favorable evaluations and minimize critical assessment of themselves) self-verification (i.e. people want to be known and understood by others according to their firmly held beliefs and feelings about themselves respectively).

Self-enhancement

In self-enhancement, the impressions individuals hold about themselves are often biased towards a positive direction. [7] Therefore, they over-emphasize favorable evaluations and minimize critical assessment of self. People use brand to represent favorable self-images to others or to themselves.

The first aspect in self-enhancement is the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem. [10] Another aspect is about social interaction (e.g. staff meetings). In terms of impression management, people actively manage their presentation (e.g. the brand of garment) in front of other people so as to maximize the opportunity to gain positive feedback. [11] On the other hand, people are also motivated to create a good impression (e.g. wearing a watch of big brand) in order to gain social approval and intrinsic satisfaction. [11] This is especially true when the person has very high self-esteem. [12]

Self-verification

Self-verification refers to seek accurate information about self. In general, people seek and interpret situations and behavioral strategies that match their present self-conceptions. In contrast, they avoid situations and behaviors that derive contradictory information. [7]

Self-verification can be achieved by two primary strategies. The first strategy is seeing more self-confirmatory evidence than actually exists. The second strategy is striving to affect the reactions of other people by developing a self-confirmatory environment, which includes displaying identity cues such as driving a certain brand of automobile. [11] [13]

It is found that people choose products and brand by imagining the prototypical users for each item in the choice set and choosing the items that maximizes their similarity to a desired prototypical user. [14]

Compatibility of self-enhancement and self-verification

It seems that it is incompatible to seek feedback that is favorable (self-enhancement) and at the same time seek accurate feedback regardless of favorability (self-verification). Social psychology shows that there are factors affecting the relative degree to which each feedback satisfied, e.g. cognitive resources, [13] stable versus malleable aspects of personality, [15] intuitive-experiential versus analytical-rational modes of thought, [16] or cognitive versus affective processes. [13] More specifically, it is found that people with high self-esteem, high self-monitors (i.e. regulate their own behavior in order to "look good"), narcissists (i.e. self-love), and Type B personalities (i.e. patient, relaxed, and easy-going) are more likely than their counterparts to be influenced by self-enhancement motives as opposed to self-verification motives. [17]

Use of YouTube to promote a brand

YouTube has become an increasingly popular platform for self-branding. As self-branding is known for its strategic placement of oneself through a media outlet, it is a commonplace for many individuals to post videos, clips, tutorials, and other visual aides under their channels. YouTube especially gives the individual the opportunity to upload and control the information that is distributed on themselves – as they are the ones creating, editing, and uploading the content. By controlling the information being displayed on their channels, it is possible to promote and market themselves on a wider scale as YouTube has millions cross paths with their site daily. [18] Through self-branding, developing one's self is not the only aspect of this self-marketing tactic. There is also the aspect of "authenticity" to validate their specialties, and also a "business-targeted self presentation". [18] This can be done through addressing the proper credentials or years of practice that has past throughout their practice of the topic or talent they relate themselves to.

The concept of self-branding a product can be seen particularly in the case of physical exercise gurus, beauty gurus, health gurus, food expert, and other gurus as well. This concept can be seen in the successful Michelle Phan, who is a beauty guru on YouTube. Michelle Phan has a record of revealing intimate facts about her life through interviews, blogs, and YouTube videos. On her website michellephan.com, she has created an "about me" section to further her self-branding in efforts to give a brief introduction about herself and her passion for beauty related topics, tips, and advice. She states, "I'm passionate about being a makeup artist and teaching others how to look and feel fabulous in their own skin". [19] She also claims to help women raise their self-esteem and confidence levels. This is all done through "a safe space where makeup enthusiasts, fashion lovers, trendsetters, and beauty aficionados alike, can find inspiration, how-to advice, style news, easy DIY ideas, and tips". [19]

YouTube gurus like Michelle Phan carry an image and a created identity. In an interview with fashionista.com, Michelle Phan stated that success in the blogging and video industry has to do with sending a message, vision, and brand identity. [20] She has said to be cautious of what she is affiliated with, as it can affect the relationship she has formed with her followers. [20] Through presenting an identity through her YouTube channel, she and other YouTube gurus alike have launched their own products. For instance, Michelle Phan has created a line of cosmetics that include eye shadows, lipsticks, eyeliners, foundation, contour sticks, concealer, and other forms of makeup that are related to the content she chooses to upload on her personal YouTube channel. Michelle Phan's ability to self-brand through media such as YouTube gives her a competitive advantage. YouTube reports that "more than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month". [21] It also states "over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube". [21] Michelle Phan's channel is one of the channels YouTube claims is among the "thousands of channels that are making six figures a year". [21]

Development of concepts

In the process of consumer socialization, self-brand connections develop throughout childhood as a result of developmental changes. Major changes occur in the representation of self-concepts between early childhood and adolescence. [22] As children grow older, they conceptualize the self in less concrete and more abstract terms. For example, a concrete thinker can recognize that John likes clothes; more abstract thinker can reflect on emotions, like affection. Self-concepts become more complex as children mature, with a greater variety of self-constructs used to describe the self. [23] In the Dixon and Street (1975) study, possessions were not part of self-concept descriptions for 6- to 8-year-olds but surfaced and increased in importance from 8 to 16 years of age.

Children recognize brand at an early age, as young as 3 or 4 years of age. John and Sujan (1990) [24] found that children 4–7 years of age used perceptual cues (shape, package color), whereas older children (8–10 years) used no observable conceptual cues (taste) as a basis for classifying products. They, in middle childhood (7–8 years of age) can name multiple brand products and request products by brand name. [25] Their comparisons of the self-concept with brand take place on a concrete level that self-brand connections are straightforward in nature. For example, self-brand connections might be made on the basis of simply being familiar with or owning a brand.

Late childhood (10–12 years of age) begin heightened appreciation for subtle meanings imbedded in brand images converges with a trend toward defining the self in more abstract and complex terms. Brands gain recognition as useful devices for characterizing the self in terms of personality traits, user characteristics, and reference groups.

As children move into adolescence, children have deeper self-brand connections because they think about brand in a very specific way—as having personalities and symbolizing group membership—that provides a natural link to their self-concepts. A greater understanding of the self, combined with social pressures to "fit in" and signal group membership, leads adolescents to be more vigilant about the social implications of owning certain brand. As a result, adolescents possess an even larger number of self-brand connections, which may be even more complex in nature.

Reference group

As mentioned in the social comparison theory proposed by social psychologist Leon Festinger in 1954, humans have a drive to evaluate themselves by examining their opinions and abilities in comparison to others. Consumers often use the images of other brands' users as a source of information for evaluating their own beliefs and perceptions about their own and others' social identities. They also actively construct self-concept using brand associations that arise through reference group.

In many consumer researches, reference group is a key concept for demonstrating the congruency between group membership and brand usage. It refers to the social groups that are important to a consumer and against which he/she compares oneself. With different personal goals, individuals would take different types of reference groups. For example, if someone would like to verify his own current social identities, he tends to compare himself with a 'member group', to which it supposes he belongs to. For example, if a person considers himself to be intellectual and his member group of intellectuals tends to drive a Volvos, he may choose to drive Volvo too. Similarly, an 'aspiration group' is another type of reference group to which an individual aspires to belong. If a consumer wishes to be more hip, and he sees hip people wearing Versace clothing, he may choose to wear Versace clothing in an attempt to appropriate the hip associations of that brand. [7] [26]

Use

On the marketing level, companies gain an enduring competitive advantage by utilizing the association between brand and self-concept. This type of association is difficult for competitors to imitate. For example, in a sport consumption context, when consumer fans identify with the team (i.e., a branded organization) and rally together in expectation of victory, the team image is emphasized.

On the individual level, brand symbolism provides moderation effects for in-group and out-group association. For in-groups, a symbolic brand has a stronger communicating effect than a non-symbolic brand; for out-groups, only a symbolic brand used to differentiate one from out-group.

Related Research Articles

In social psychology, self-assessment is the process of looking at oneself in order to assess aspects that are important to one's identity. It is one of the motives that drive self-evaluation, along with self-verification and self-enhancement. Sedikides (1993) suggests that the self-assessment motive will prompt people to seek information to confirm their uncertain self-concept rather than their certain self-concept and at the same time people use self-assessment to enhance their certainty of their own self-knowledge. However, the self-assessment motive could be seen as quite different from the other two self-evaluation motives. Unlike the other two motives, through self-assessment people are interested in the accuracy of their current self view, rather than improving their self-view. This makes self-assessment the only self-evaluative motive that may cause a person's self-esteem to be damaged.

The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive, conative or affective representation of one's identity, or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known.

In the psychology of self, one's self-concept is a collection of beliefs about oneself. Generally, self-concept embodies the answer to the question "Who am I?".

A self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner. It is the belief that individuals tend to ascribe success to their own abilities and efforts, but ascribe failure to external factors. When individuals reject the validity of negative feedback, focus on their strengths and achievements but overlook their faults and failures, or take more credit for their group's work than they give to other members, they are protecting their self-esteem from threat and injury. These cognitive and perceptual tendencies perpetuate illusions and error, but they also serve the self's need for esteem. For example, a student who attributes earning a good grade on an exam to their own intelligence and preparation but attributes earning a poor grade to the teacher's poor teaching ability or unfair test questions might be exhibiting the self-serving bias. Studies have shown that similar attributions are made in various situations, such as the workplace, interpersonal relationships, sports, and consumer decisions.

Impression management is a conscious or subconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people about a person, object or event by regulating and controlling information in social interaction. It was first conceptualized by Erving Goffman in 1959 in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, and then was expanded upon in 1967.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Consumer behaviour</span> Study of individuals, groups, or organizations and all the activities associated with consuming

Consumer behavior is the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and all the activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services. Consumer behaviour consists of how the consumer's emotions, attitudes, and preferences affect buying behaviour. Consumer behaviour emerged in the 1940–1950s as a distinct sub-discipline of marketing, but has become an interdisciplinary social science that blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology, anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, marketing, and economics.

In-group favoritism, sometimes known as in-group–out-group bias, in-group bias, intergroup bias, or in-group preference, is a pattern of favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, in allocation of resources, and in many other ways.

Self-knowledge is a term used in psychology to describe the information that an individual draws upon when finding an answer to the question "What am I like?".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social comparison theory</span> Theory in social psychology

Social comparison theory, initially proposed by social psychologist Leon Festinger in 1954, centers on the belief that there is a drive within individuals to gain accurate self-evaluations. The theory explains how individuals evaluate their own opinions and abilities by comparing themselves to others in order to reduce uncertainty in these domains, and learn how to define the self. Comparing oneself to others socially is a form of measurement and self assessment to identify where an individual stands according to their own set of standards and emotions about themselves.

A lifestyle brand is a brand that attempts to embody the values, aspirations, interests, attitudes, or opinions of a group or a culture for marketing purposes. Lifestyle brands seek to inspire, guide, and motivate people, with the goal of making their products contribute to the definition of the consumer's way of life. As such, they are closely associated with the advertising and other promotions used to gain mind share in their target market. They often operate from an ideology, hoping to attract a relatively high number of people and ultimately become a recognised social phenomenon.

Self-verification is a social psychological theory that asserts people want to be known and understood by others according to their firmly held beliefs and feelings about themselves, that is self-views. It is one of the motives that drive self-evaluation, along with self-enhancement and self-assessment.

William B. Swann is a professor of social and personality psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is primarily known for his work on identity, self and self-esteem, but has also done research on relationships, social cognition, group processes, accuracy in person perception and interpersonal expectancy effects. He received his Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of Minnesota and undergraduate degree from Gettysburg College.


Social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group.

Basking in reflected glory (BIRGing) is a self-serving cognition whereby an individual associates themselves with known successful others such that the winner's success becomes the individual's own accomplishment. The affiliation of another's success is enough to stimulate self glory. The individual does not need to be personally involved in the successful action. To BIRG, they must simply associate themselves with the success. Examples of BIRGing include anything from sharing a home state with a past or present famous person, to religious affiliations, to sports teams. For example, when a fan of a football team wears the team's jersey and boasts after a win, this fan is engaging in BIRGing. A parent with a bumper sticker reading "My child is an honor student" is basking in the reflected glory of their child. While many people have anecdotal accounts of BIRGing, social psychologists seek to find experimental investigations delving into BIRGing. Within social psychology, BIRGing is thought to enhance self-esteem and to be a component of self-management.

Raison Oblige Theory offers an alternate explanation of exhibited behaviors widely accepted to be caused by the motive of self-verification (SVT)(William Swann, 1983). The theory addresses instances of apparent self-view confirmation strivings and details an economical description of why these behaviors occur. Focusing on the importance of the self-view and rational thought, Raison oblige theory (ROT) accounts for the evidence supporting SVT including the well documented seemingly mal-adaptive self verifying behaviors.

Self-esteem can be defined as how favorably individuals evaluate themselves. According to Leary, self-esteem is the relationship between one's real self and one's ideal self, feeding off of favorable behaviors. It refers to an individual's sense of their value or worth, or the extent to which a person values, approves of, appreciates, prizes, or likes themselves. Self-esteem is generally considered the evaluative component of the self-concept, a broader representation of the self that includes cognitive and behavioral aspects as well as evaluative or affective ones. There are several different proposals as to the functions of self-esteem. One proposal is that it satisfies the inherent need to feel good about oneself. Another is that it serves to minimize social rejection. Self-esteem is also known as a way for a person to remain dominant in relationships. Self-esteem is known to protect people from potential fear that arises from the prospect of death. Self-esteem helps motivate people to achieve their goals – high self-esteem leading to coping in situations and low self-esteem leading to avoidance.

In social psychology, collective narcissism is the tendency to exaggerate the positive image and importance of a group to which one belongs. The group may be defined by ideology, race, political beliefs/stance, religion, sexual orientation, social class, language, nationality, employment status, education level, cultural values, or any other ingroup. While the classic definition of narcissism focuses on the individual, collective narcissism extends this concept to similar excessively high opinions of a person's social group, and suggests that a group can function as a narcissistic entity.

Body cathexis is defined as the degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction one feels towards various parts and aspects of their own body. This evaluative dimension of body image is dependent on a person's investment of mental and emotional energy in body size, parts, shape, processes, and functions, and is integral to one's sense of self-concept. First recognized by Jourard and Secord, body cathexis is assessed by examining correlations between measures of self-concept or esteem and bodily attitudes. An individual's evaluation of their own body tends to drive various behaviors, including clothing choices and weight management, and the existence of a universal ideal for certain dimensions of body type is, in many cases, a source of anxiety and insecurity.

Collective self-esteem is a concept originating in the field of psychology that describes the aspect of an individual's self-image that stems from how the individual interacts with others and the groups that the individual is a part of. The idea originated during the research of Jennifer Crocker, during which she was trying to learn about the connection between a person's self-esteem and their attitude towards or about the group that the person is part of.

Consumer identity is the consumption pattern through which a consumer describes themselves.

References

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  18. 1 2 Marwick, Alice (2013). Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age.
  19. 1 2 "ABOUT ME - Michelle Phan".
  20. 1 2 "Michelle Phan's Advice for Getting Famous on YouTube".
  21. 1 2 3 YouTube. "Statistics - YouTube". YouTube .
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  24. ↑ John, Deborah Roedder and Mita Sujan (1990), "Age Differences in Product Categorization," Journal of Consumer Research, 16 (March), 452–60.
  25. ↑ John, Deborah Roedder (1999), "Consumer Socialization of Children: A Retrospective Look at Twenty-Five Years of Research," Journal of Consumer Research, 26 (December), 183–213.
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