The Mental Bias In Consumer’s Self-congruity Comparison

Image is a bridge that connects individuals the brands they consume in the marketplace. Both "brand image" and "consumer "self-image" are often critical factors that drive purchase behavior. Based on this argument, self-congruity theory is into the people’s attention, which suggests that the favorable brand attitude are partially a function of image congruence phenomenon, a mental comparison that consumers make in regards to the similarity or dissimilarity of a brand’s image and their own self-image. Unfortunately, researches in marketing field only focus on the benefit gotten from this mental comparison, but not the bias in the comparison process which is almost inevitably.In the field of cognitive psychology, the bias happened in the comparison process similar as self-congruity comparison has been found and defined by psychologists. Research has consistently revealed that people will rate various types of personality feedback as accurate descriptions of their own personalities. This phenomenon is known as the Barnum effect. This paper is trying to discover the Barnum effect in the self-congruity comparison using experimental method, and the results definitely confirm my proposition. Besides we also found a significant of positive correlations between the degree of bias and the two marketing variables:consumer’s self-extent and brand engagement. Nevertheless, the involvement of brand personality will fix the bias of Barnum effect to same extent.