Brand constellations: reflections of the emotional self

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role that enduring consumer emotional traits play in brand constellation formation. Theories of self-image and brand-image congruence are used as the foundation to explain how complex brand constellations are a reflection of emotional dispositions.

Design/methodology/approach

A clustering technique based on 24 consumption emotion set items was used to analyze data from 287 consumers and 66 different consumer brands. A conjoint analysis was also performed to examine the degree of brand congruence within each cluster.

Findings

Results reveal four unique consumer clusters (Sad, Passionate, Joyful, and Balanced Middle) with unique brand constellations and differing degrees of brand congruence. Of significance is the Sad cluster, which shows a strong brand congruence to seemingly hedonic products.

Research limitations/implications

Given the nature of self-reported data, an inherent potential bias because of a single source for both dependent and independent variables exists. Also, this research design is based on an inductive form of reasoning, and thus, results may not be falsifiable.

Practical implications

Implications of brand constellations based on emotional dispositions for marketing theory and practice are discussed. Given this exploratory research on brand constellations defined by emotional disposition, limitations and avenues for future research are also presented.

Social implications

In this paper, the consumer’s enduring psychological traits act as the grouping mechanism, and from this psychometric profile, brands group to reflect the collective self-image of consumers based on emotional disposition. By introducing the emotional disposition approach to constellation formation, the authors demonstrate that psychometric variables offer a new methodology by which brands may be categorized.

Originality/value

Using a cluster analysis to essentially reverse-engineer consumption patterns is novel and reflects a valid approach toward demonstrating how otherwise unrelated brands may be consumed together.

Citation

Flight, R.L. and Coker, K.K. (2016), "Brand constellations: reflections of the emotional self", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 25 No. 2, pp. 134-147. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-02-2015-0806