A Study Of Influence Of The Congruence Of Self-Concept And Brand Personality On Customer Satisfaction

In the market it is the customers that decide the existence of the enterprises. (Drucker 1954). If the products can not win the customers'credit, the resources will not be changed into wealth. Then there is no market, no profit, no sustainable development, and finally no existence. Therefore, the creation of customer needs and the pursuit of satisfying the customers are the foundation for the fundamental. Even if the enterprise satisfies the customers for the time being, but it fails to meet their satisfaction continuously, it will not have the customers and eventually fails. In the consumer-driven era, it is especially important to meet the needs of customers and keep them satisfied. Research related to customers'satisfaction is the eternal subject for the marketing researchers and practitioners, and it has important theoretical and practical significance.Customers'satisfaction can make them buy the products again and again, accept the other products and produce positive word of mouth effect (Cardozo 1965).Besides; customers'satisfaction can produce customer loyalty (Bloemer and Kasper 1995). To date, numerous studies have explored the theoretical structure and customer satisfaction measurement methods (Bearden and Teel 1983; Churchill and Suprenant 1982). In addition, many scholars have studied the influencing factors of customer satisfaction. They pointed out that age, gender, personal abilities, educational level, and income, they all affect customer satisfaction (Pickle and Bruce 1972; Pfaff 1972; Westbrook and Newman 1978). However, there are few researches about the impact on self-concept and brand personality consistency (Sirgy et al. 1997; Jamal and Goode 2001). Self-concept and brand personality consistency theory concept is known as self-consistency theory. It refers to a subjective feeling produced by the interaction between the user image and self-concept in the consuming process (Sirgy et al. 1997). The significance of self-concept is it can influence consumers'behavior by means of self-image. That is, the products used by consumers are the representation of their self-concept (Sirgy 1982).Self-concept has been introduced to the research on consumer behavior since 1950s. Gardner and Levy analyze the consistent relationship between self-concept and product image by means of qualitative research method. (Gardner, Levy 1955; Levy 1959). Dolich (1969) discusses the consistent degree between the two dimensions of self-concept and product image can influence brand preference through the quantitative methods. In addition, other scholars validate the influence that different dimensions of self-concept have on consumer behavior (Maheshwari 1974; Samli and Sirgy 1981; Sirgy 1979, 1980 ;). Some internal scholars have also done some researches about the influence that different dimensions of self-concept have on consumer behavior according to different industries. (Liang Huihuang 2007; Ying Ailing, Zhu Jinfu 2007; Ji Jing 2008; Zhu ZhengHao, Liu Dingyi, Zhang Han 2008), However, these studies only consider before-buying behavior of consumers. As to the research about the impact that self-concept consistency has on customer satisfaction, although some foreign scholars has involved now, there are still some limitations. They consider the overall self-concept influence on customer satisfaction, and there is no breakdown of the various dimensions of self-concept's influence on customer satisfaction, such as the ideal self-consistent influence on customer satisfaction. However, another study shows that self-concept related to the different dimensions and consistencies of product image on the same consumption behavior of consumers have different influences (Dolich 1969).Therefore, this study proposes a "self-concept and brand personality consistent impact on customer satisfaction model" .As the theoretical framework of this study; the model will explore the concept of true self-consistency, ideal self-concept consistency of customer satisfaction effect. The aim of this study is to fill in the gaps in current research area, and detail the impact that the consistency of self-concept (actual self, ideal self) has on customer satisfaction.Convenient goods, as the research object of this study, mainly to the quantitative and qualitative empirical methods supplemented by using the convenience sampling methods sampling data collection. The research designs of questionnaires are used in the mainstream of research in the field scale, using five-score Likert scale. Brand personality questionnaire, respectively, the real self-concept, ideal self-concept and the concepts of customer satisfaction are measured. 270 questionnaires are distributed in this survey, 263 of which have responded, that is, the response rate is 94.2%. By analyzing and ordering, there are 244 valid questionnaires, that is, the recovery rate of questionnaires is 90.4%. According to the purpose of this study and the need for testing hypotheses, these studies have used statistical analysis software SPSS16.0 first to describe data collected by statistical analysis; then conduct them by reliability and validity analysis, and finally build the data the regression equation and are validated. The analysis results show that the two dimensions of self-concept - the concept of the ideal self, real self-concept - the extent consistent with the brand personality have a positive effect on customer satisfaction. Among them, the consistence between the ideal self-concept and brand personality has a greater influence on customer satisfaction than the consistence between the real self-concept and brand personality.The two assumptions of this article have been effectively verified. Therefore, in theory, this study extends the domestic space of the theory of customer satisfaction, and foreshadows the further study on the relationship between the consistency of self-concept and customer satisfaction. In practice, this research quantified the relationship between the consistency of self-concept and customer satisfaction, allowing practitioners to get theoretical support in practice and carry out practical and effective marketing campaigns. The conclusion shows that, if you want to improve customer satisfaction, marketers need to give appropriate attention to self-concept of consumers and product brand personality, especially the consistence of real self-concept and brand personality. Marketers should try to make brand personality of the product meet the needs of the target customers'self-concept. Only in this way can the enterprises satisfy more customers. Only when the enterprises win the customers'satisfaction, they may have customers'loyalty. Only when they own customers'loyalty, they may dominate the market. Only when they dominate the market, they can continue to develop. Only when they continue to develop, they can get more competitive advantages. Then they can be prosperous in the market for a long time.Based on the limitations of this study, there are still some limitations and shortcomings. But overall, it still has theoretical and practical significance to some degree, which can provide a theoretical perspective and reference value for the following researches.