How Self-Construals Moderate the Self-Congruity Effect: A Cross-National Study (Abstract)

Abstract

Self-congruity (SC) theory posits that consumers choose brands reflecting the image that consumers have of themselves (Sirgy 1982). Despite substantial research on SC (cf. Aguirre-Rodriguez et al. 2012), it is first unclear whether the SC effects (actual, ideal, social, and ideal social) hold beyond Western countries. Second, individual-level culture is yet to be considered as a moderator of the SC effects. Thus, this study first tests the four SC effects on brand attitude across Western and Eastern consumers (H1–H4). Second, we posit and test the propositions that the individual-level cultural variables self-construals (independent and interdependent; cf. Markus and Kitayama 1991) will moderate the SC effects to deliver stronger actual (H5) and social (H7) SC effects for interdependents (INT) over independents (IND) while producing stronger ideal (H6) and ideal social (H8) SC effects for IND over INT. We test our hypotheses using a survey of over 1600 non-student consumers in the USA and India. To our knowledge, this is the first study of the SC effect across with non-Western consumers. Our findings in support for the actual SC effect (H1) across the two samples extend previous evidence obtained from Western countries (e.g., Mazodier and Merunka 2012) and support this tenet of SC theory. However, our findings fail to support the ideal (H2), social (H3), and ideal social (H4) SC effects across contexts, thus questioning the universality of these three tenets of SC theory. Previous support for the ideal SC effect came from studies of Western consumers (e.g., Malar et al. 2011). Our findings from the USA support such research, yet our findings from India do not, thus suggesting that the ideal SC effect may be context specific. Similarly, our findings support the social SC effect in India but not in the USA, thus suggesting that previous questionings of this effect, arisen from studies of US consumers (Sirgy 1982; Malhotra 1989), may have similarly been determined by the country context chosen in those studies. We find no support for the ideal social SC effect in either sample. In sum, our findings suggest that at least the ideal and social SC effects may be context specific, thus pointing at national context as a potential boundary condition of SC theory. Future research of Western and Eastern consumers on the four SC effects will be needed to substantiate these conclusions. Results support the moderating effect of individual-level cultural variables independence and interdependence, as the actual SC effect is stronger for INT (H5), while the ideal SC effect on BA is stronger for IND (H6). Results fail to support the moderating impact of self-construals on the social (H7) and ideal social SC effect (H8). These findings, which will need further substantiation in future research, suggest that individual-level culture needs to be considered as a boundary condition of SC theory, at least in relation to the actual and ideal SC effects. Thus, future research could test the expectation that individuals with high long-term orientation and power distance should react more positively to actual than ideal SC (Bearden et al. 2006; Jung and Kellaris 2006). Our findings also suggest that branding strategies based on SC may need to be adjusted on a country-by-country basis, e.g., by focusing on ideal SC in Western and actual SC in Eastern countries while also showing up potentials for cross-national segmentation.