An Empirical Study Of Brand Attitude From The View Point Of Self Concept

Self concept (self image) is an individual's perception of himself. Consumer's brand consumption behavior will be influenced by many aspects of the brand image. So the self concept of a consumer has a very important effect in the process of brand purchasing decision, many researches have found that consumers are more intent to purchase the brand which image is congruence with the self concept(self image), based on such kind of researches the "Self-Concept Congruence Theory "was proposed(Sirgy,1985; Zinkham and Hong,1991). So the consumer's brand attitude and other band consumption behaviors can be observed through the study of relationship between self concept and brand image, and the study will be very significant for brand building in real practice.The western scholars have done many studies about the consumer's brand consumption behaviors from the point view of self concept. Some scholars had began to make such researches in 1960s(Dolich , Ira 1969,Congruence Relationships Between Self Images and Product Brands) . However, such kind of study in China still be in the beginning phase. With the development of market, the study of brand consumption from the point view of self concept will become more important.Generally speaking, the self concept is consist of actual self and ideal self. Some researches found that actual self and ideal self have different effect in brand consumption. Moreover, consumer's self concept is different in different period. So with one's condition changed the actual self and ideal self will also have different effect in brand consumption. From the view point of self concept and brand image congruence, this study made an empirical test on the cell phone consumption of two different groups. The study found that a consumer who is in the career developing period is intent to purchase a brand which image is congruent with the ideal self concept and a consumer who is in the career developed period is intent to purchase a brand which image is congruent with the real self concept.