Consumer-Brand Virtue Character Congruence in a Retail Service Setting

Abstract

This paper examines the role of consumers’ self-brand personality congruence on virtue ethical character (Virtue Character Congruence) in building favorable consumer evaluation for a cosmetics brand through a case study of The Body Shop, which was recently taken over by L’Oréal. A questionnaire survey found that, contrary to the notion emphasized in the Marketing literature and by practitioners, the self-brand ethical character congruence did not have a significant impact on customers’ identification with The Body Shop with exception of the empathy virtue character. The congruence between consumers’ own empathy and the brand’s empathy character had significant influence in creating consumer identification and ethical image of the brand, but the level of empathy congruence was the weakest in the case of the Body Shop.