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This study aims to examine the effects of self-image congruities (i.e. the match between the image of a product or brand and a customer’s image of themselves) as an affective psychological process in the context of a restaurant setting. The study proposed that a customer’s perception of congruity between his or her self-image and a restaurant could be a salient antecedent for eliciting positive affects toward restaurants, which may influences customers’ evaluations of the functional attributes of a restaurant. The relative effects of actual versus ideal self-image congruity on positive affects, along with the moderating effect of the type of restaurant, were also investigated.

An online survey was developed and distributed to randomly selected respondents in the USA and a total of 376 responses were used for the data analyses. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the relationships among five constructs: actual self-image congruity, ideal self-image congruity, positive affect, evaluation of the restaurant experience and revisiting intentions. To investigate the moderating effect of the restaurant type – more specifically, to examine differences in relative importance of actual versus ideal self-image congruity based on the type of restaurant (casual dining versus fine dining) – multiple group analyses were executed.

The results showed that both actual and ideal self-image congruity significantly influence positive affect, which has a significant influence on customers’ evaluations of the functional attributes of a restaurant. Actual self-image congruity effect on positive affect was significant in casual dining restaurants, but it was not significant in fine-dining restaurants. Ideal self-image congruity effect on positive affect was significant in both casual and fine-dining restaurant.

This study provides practical implications for developing an effective marketing communication in terms of promoting different segments of restaurant (casual dining vs fine-dining) based upon the customers’ perception of self-image congruity.

This paper includes a theoretical model that explains whether self-image congruity is a salient antecedent influencing restaurant customers’ positive feelings toward a restaurant brand. It also examined the relative effects of actual versus ideal self-image congruities in different restaurant settings.

This study aims to examine the moderated mediation model among self-image congruity, self-brand connection, self-motivation and brand preference and validate that actual and ideal self-image congruity are two distinct constructs. As shown in the conceptual model, actual and ideal self-image congruity toward a brand have direct and indirect positive effects on brand preference through self-brand connection, whereas self-motivation moderates the effect of self-image congruity on self-brand connection.

Data collection was done through mall intercepts in six shopping malls in Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Huizhou in southern China. In total, 461 usable questionnaires were collected with 500 distributed copies. Confirmatory factor analysis using Mplus (v.7) was done to assess the measurement validity for each construct. PROCESS analysis for SPSS (v.19.0.0) was used for hypothesis testing.

Both actual and ideal self-image congruities present significant positive effects on brand preference through self-brand connection. The relationship between self-image congruity and the self-brand connection is also moderated by self-motivation.

This study fills an existing literature gap by distinguishing self-image and ideal self-image congruity as distinct constructs. Self-brand connection is posited as a new way to understand the mechanism of the self-image congruity effect on brand preference. Samples from several shopping malls in southern China are used to justify the important moderating role of self-motivation in consumers’ brand preferences.

This paper aims to develop a model that will include self‐image congruence, attitudes, satisfaction and explain their role on behavioural intentions.

A qualitative survey was carried out. It was followed by a quantitative study, conducted in two stages to clarify the self‐congruity scale. Results were used to lead an exploratory investigation of a conceptual model of behavioural intentions.

Ideal self‐image congruity had a stronger direct effect on attitudes, than did actual self‐image congruity. Indeed, there was evidence in this study that behavioural intentions were directly or indirectly influenced by shopper's self‐congruity, attitudes, and satisfaction.

No research has ever simultaneously compared the relative influence of these important constructs on service encounter outcomes. The obvious implication is the need for further consideration of similar composite models. Indeed, it would be instructive in future research to assess the extent to which individual characteristics and demographic variables mediate self‐congruity, attitudes and satisfaction, and their influence on behavioural intentions.

Retailers need to realize that positioning their store to enhance the likelihood of self‐congruity with target shoppers and improve their attitudes, is important but not enough. The goal for improving self‐congruity and attitudes is to make sure shoppers have received the benefit they expect to find. The benefits received directly influence shoppers' decisions on whether they will want to come back in the future and what they will say about the store to others.

This research provides an improved understanding of the role of self‐congruity, attitudes and satisfaction on behavioural intentions. The inclusion of self‐congruity and attitudes in the proposed model as antecedents of behavioural intentions is one of the unique aspects of the study.

Studies have explored the determinants of customer advocacy because of customer advocacy's vital role in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing. The current research complements the existing literature in the hospitality field by examining the association between restaurant innovativeness and customer advocacy while also investigating the mediating roles of self-image congruity and customer engagement.

The statistical software AMOS version 25 and bootstrapping were employed to test the hypotheses. Purposive sampling was employed for participant recruitment, and a self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Data were collected from Taiwanese customers who had dined at selected restaurants.

The results from 385 restaurant customers reported that self-image congruity had an indirect impact on customer advocacy through customer engagement. Customer advocacy was influenced by restaurant innovativeness through the mediation of customer engagement. The influence of restaurant innovativeness on customer advocacy was positively and sequentially mediated by self-image congruity and customer engagement.

Restaurant innovativeness is linked to customer advocacy through self-image congruity and customer engagement. Thus, restaurant managers should implement strategies focusing on innovativeness to improve self-image congruity and engagement among customers.

The current research may be the first to provide a research model that explores restaurant innovativeness, self-image congruity, customer engagement and customer advocacy in the hospitality context. This study also has practical implications for enhancing customer advocacy.

The purpose of this paper is to treat bloggers as human brands and applies self-congruity theory to explore how actual and ideal blogger-reader self-congruity, combined with the blog’s functional congruity, influences blogger-reader relationship quality (BRRQ) and the blogger’s informational influence, taking perceived interactivity among blog members as a moderator.

Using a survey of 372 female beauty blog readers, this study employs the structural equation modelling approach to investigate the proposed model.

The empirical findings indicate that readers’ perceived self-congruity with beauty bloggers raises the bloggers’ informational influence, mediated by BRRQ and functional congruity. Actual self-congruity has greater predictive power than ideal self-congruity in explaining bloggers’ informational influence. Moreover, perceived interactivity plays a two-sided role because it strengthens the positive impact of BRRQ on informational influence but weakens the positive impact of functional congruity on informational influence.

The findings should help marketers identify influential beauty bloggers through their presented image on their blogs to encourage readers’ acceptance of their opinions about products and services. However, when focusing on beauty blogs featuring high-perceived interactivity among blog members, marketers should carefully balance the facilitating and offsetting effect of perceived interactivity and identify bloggers equipped with superior BRRQ.

Using human brand and parasocial interaction perspectives, this study contributes to emerging research on human brands and blog marketing and demonstrates that perceived interactivity is a double-edged sword in stimulating a blogger’s informational influence.

This study aims to examine the influence of two significant product labelling strategies (geographical indication [GI] vs country-of-origin [COO]) on shaping customer product attitude and purchase likelihood, considering consumers’ ethnocentric and cosmopolitan tendencies. The authors also investigate the boundary conditions and intervening mechanisms to manage the adverse consumer product evaluations and present mitigating procedures which reinstate favourable product evaluations and purchase likelihood.

The collected data from these all these studies were analysed using ANOVA and mediation anlaysis. The study tests the proposed hypotheses using three follow-up experimental investigations.

The study found that GI (vs COO) labels have a more significant impact on customers’ product evaluation and likelihood of purchase and supported the dispositional effect of ethnocentric and cosmopolitan inclinations. Further, the results indicated that self-product congruence can efficiently regulate consumer dispositions. Also, the results confirmed the significant impact of product identification on influencing consumer attitudes.

The above-said insights add practical insights, particularly concerning product labelling. Also, the insights on product attitudes and purchase likelihood intricacies in the context of product labelling enable companies to comprehend better the significance of GI labels, COO labels and self-product congruence.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time a study has compared the role of two significant product labelling strategies (GI vs COO) in shaping customer product evaluations, confirmed its boundary conditions and shown how to transform them into helpful customer product outcomes.

This study investigated the impacts of the technology acceptance model (TAM) determinants and image congruence on attitude and, in turn, behavioral intentions. In addition, the differences between the US and Korean consumers in terms of the predictors of attitude were assessed.

The data were collected via an online survey from 342 South Korean and 353 American consumers who patronized a restaurant within a three-month timeframe.

The findings revealed that two dimensions of TAM and three sub-factors of self-image congruence positively affected customer attitude toward face recognition (FR) payment. Customer attitude also significantly influenced behavioral intentions toward FR payment. Lastly, the cultural differences between the Korean and American consumers played significant moderating roles in the relationships between perceived usefulness and attitude as well as between actual self-image congruence and attitude.

No prior empirical research has incorporated cultural differences into the FR payment acceptance model. Unlike previous research, the current study included cultural differences as a moderator of the relationships between the five predictors (i.e. two predictors from TAM and three dimensions of self-image congruence) and attitude toward FR payment in the research model.

The aim of this paper is to measure the empirical relationship between self‐congruity and game usage and purchase. This is important because it highlights that games affect self concept and the symbolic value that can be obtained from the game. It is aimed to implement this study across four game types.

A total of 493 consumers were surveyed and confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling conducted across four game groups to model this same relationship.

It was found that self‐congruity was positively related to game usage and purchase.

Game development for consumers online, on wireless devices and on consoles should place greater emphasis on the practical implications of self‐congruity. Games impact self concept through self‐congruity. So, it is important that marketers understand the potential harm and positive impact of games on the consumers' cognition.

This is the first paper to explore and model self‐congruity and game purchase and usage behaviour. This paper is further unique because it provides results across four games groups: all games representing, followed by the alternative models, Sports/Simulation/Driving, Role‐playing Game (RPG)/Massively Multiplayer Online Role‐playing Game (MMORPG)/Strategy, and Action/Adventure/Fighting,

This review aims to synthesize the brand hate literature and suggest directions for future research on brand hate.

This study adopted an integrative literature review method to synthesize and assess the brand hate literature.

The synthesis showed that social identity theory, disidentification theory and duplex theory are prominently used in brand hate studies, and a larger portion of brand hate research was conducted in Western countries. Further, brand-related, self-congruity, personal factors, information influence and brand community influence are the major types of antecedents of brand hate which can produce soft or hard consequences. Lexicometric analysis showed causes of brand hate, consumers' negative emotional and behavioral outcomes and community anti-brand behavior as key themes of brand hate research.

The synthesis has followed predefined criteria for the inclusion research papers. Thus, the review is limited to articles that fulfilled the criteria for inclusion.

The finding will help marketers, specially brand managers, craft strategies to handle brand hate.

The brand hate literature is still developing and remains incoherent, suggesting that a synthesized review is needed. This study has systematically reviewed and synthesized the brand hate literature to study its development over time and proposes a framework which provides a comprehensive understanding of brand hate.

In contrast to outer apparel, academic research has neglected consumer behaviour for intimate apparel or lingerie. It is argued that within this category the bra deserves singular research attention. This paper presents the results of exploratory research designed to explore in depth the bra consumer decision process. The key findings indicate a highly involved consumer who is motivated by a complex range of interlinked factors, and a consumer who desires to be brand loyal in order to enjoy a less extensive decision process, but who is prevented from doing so by high levels of perceived risk and “obstructive” marketing. The authors offer directions for future empirical research based on the consumer behavioural constructs of involvement, perceived risk and the self‐concept. Implications for marketing management are also discussed.