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This study aims to investigate how the gratifications obtained through brand-related social media content affect brand intimacy and thereby influence customer extra-role behavior.

Using the uses and gratification theory, this study proposes information, entertainment and remuneration content that motivates customers to develop brand intimacy and thereby perform customer extra-role behavior. The study also tests the moderated moderation effect of self-congruence and customer experience using 704 observations from South India in the food industry context.

The study’s results reveal the influence of entertainment and remuneration content on brand intimacy, which further influences customer extra-role behavior (civic virtue, cocreation, sportsmanship and helping behaviors). The study confirms a moderated moderation effect in the relationship between brand intimacy and civic virtue and brand intimacy and sportsmanship behaviors.

The study suggests that brands may include entertainment and remuneration elements in their social media content to build intimate customer relationships, further influencing customers’ extra-role behaviors. Besides, brands should focus on customers’ self-concepts and experiences to encourage them to act voluntarily.

This study makes a unique contribution by investigating the influence of brand-related social media content on customer extra-role behavior through brand intimacy. It uses self-congruence and customer experience to test their moderated moderation effect in the relationship between brand intimacy and customer extra-role behavior.

Ethical consumerism is gaining importance as consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about brands' moral intentions and social and legal practices. Hence, in a quest to advance the current application of ethics in branding, this study substantiates literature by investigating consumer-perceived brand ethicality's (CPBE) role in affecting psychological, affective and behavioral responses of consumers (i.e. psychological brand ownership (PBO), brand commitment and willingness to pay a price premium (WPPP). Further, the authors test self-congruence as the boundary condition for CPBE.

Online survey method resulted in 408 responses, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

CPBE emerged as a predictor for PBO, brand commitment and WPPP. However, counterintuitively, self-congruence failed to reflect any moderating effect on the relationships between CPBE and PBO and CPBE and brand commitment.

Brands are encouraged to indulge in and reflect ethical practices to generate favorable consumer responses, i.e. PBO, brand commitment and WPPP.

Based on the ethical and psychological ownership theories, the investigation adds to the scholarship on CPBE and its outcomes. Arguably, it remains the first study to document the linkage between CPBE and PBO.

With rising globalization, Western and Eastern brands are increasingly collaborating and co-branding. Drawing on the theory of dialectical self that captures the degree of cognitive tendency to tolerate conflicts, inconsistencies and ambiguities in self-concept, this paper investigates the effect of consumer dialectical self on co-branding that encompasses Western and East Asian cultural brand personality traits.

Two studies were conducted using Chinese participants to examine the effects of the dialectical self on co-brand evaluation under single-and dual-personality conditions and to explore the mediating role of ideal social self-congruence and the moderating role of product type (high vs low conspicuous).

The findings suggest that counterintuitive to the received wisdom, the dialectical self negatively influences one's attitude towards a co-brand in the dual-personality condition only. Further, ideal social self-congruence mediates the relationship between the dialectical self and dual-personality co-brand evaluation in the high conspicuous product condition only.

Important implications are offered to international marketing managers for managing the dialectical self that lead to positive co-brand evaluations. Moreover, managers should highlight ideal social self-congruence for co-branding success for particular product types.

This paper examines co-branding from a novel perspective of consumer dialectical self and shows the pivotal role it plays when brands carry varying cultural traits engage in co-branding. By identifying the role of the dialectical self and the important mediator and moderator, the paper fulfils an important gap in co-branding literature and offers key implications.

This study conceptualizes and validates a model of participation intentions in online brand communities by including perceived brand authenticity and consumer-brand relationship as its antecedents.

Data were collected from different online brand communities' members. In total, 465 responses were analyzed through structural equation modeling.

The study's findings establish that the continuity, credibility, and integrity dimensions of perceived brand authenticity significantly strengthen the consumer-brand relationship, which ultimately influences the consumers' participation intentions in online brand communities.

Future research should examine the applicability of the proposed model to the customer-created online brand communities. Consumer participation intentions may be compared across product categories.

The findings contribute to the emerging and important area in marketing by highlighting the importance of brand authenticity and consumer-brand relationship in developing an urge to participate in online brand communities.

The aim of this study is to explore the relationships between actual (ASC) and ideal self-congruence (ISC) and harmonious (HBP) and obsessive brand passion (OBP).

Study 1 uses a sample collected via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to test a baseline conceptual model which links ASC and ISC to HBP and OBP. Study 2 employs a sample outsourced through Qualtrics. Study 2 had dual objectives: to replicate Study 1 using a larger and more diverse sample and to test whether hedonic brand characteristics may affect the hypothesized relationships between two types of self-congruence and two types of brand passion.

The findings suggest that different types of self-congruity influence different types of consumer passion for the brand. Specifically, a fit between brand personality and one’s true self (ASC) helps develop a passion for the brand that is self-affirming and in harmony with other facets of the consumer’s life. Fit between brand personality and one’s ideal self (ISC) leads to OBP. The results suggest that hedonic benefits of a brand do not moderate the relationship between ASC and HBP.

This research examines the duality of brand passion (harmonious and obsessive) and the relationships with consumers’ ASC and ISC. It provides insight into how a product-related context variable (hedonic nature of the product) can moderate these relationships and further augments the nomological network of the dual brand passion concept in the brand consumer context.

This study aims to analyze the antecedents and consequences of customers’ actual and ideal self-congruence in the tourism and hospitality context. This research analyzes playfulness (e.g. creative- and enjoyment-based), self-congruence (e.g. actual and ideal self-congruence) and passion (e.g. harmonious and obsessive).

Data were collected from 350 integrated resort customers in the USA, and the hypotheses were examined using partial least square-structural equation modeling.

Findings suggest that creative-based playfulness significantly and positively influences the different types of customers’ self-congruence. Moreover, a fit between integrated resort brand and customers’ actual and ideal self leads to their harmonious and obsessive passion toward integrated resort brand.

In the integrated resort setting, customers’ attitude toward innovation served as the antecedent of self-congruence and passion. The proposed model can be used to other sectors, such as hotels, restaurants and casinos.

The present study contributes to integrated resort service providers through the provision of several insights into how they can manage integrated resort brands.

This study contributes to the service research and extends previous studies in several important ways. Although previous studies have focused on analyzing the effect of the playfulness of product on customers’ behavior, the current study moves a step further by assessing its relationship with dual types of image congruence and passion in the tourism and hospitality setting.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of identity-based consumer perceptions on the brand avoidance of foreign brands across multiple markets.

Focussing on general product category brands, the study was conducted across two countries, i.e. New Zealand (Study 1) and Pakistan (Study 2), using online surveys. Study 1 explores the perceptions of university students, whereas Study 2 evaluates the perceptions of a more heterogeneous population across the country. Partial least squares–structural equation modelling was used to analyse the model.

First, the results confirm that individual-level identity-based drivers (undesired self-congruence and negative social influence) consistently predict brand avoidance for foreign brands across both markets, whereas country-level drivers (consumer ethnocentrism and animosity) have inconsistent effects across the markets. Second, the study demonstrates that avoidance attitude fully mediates the relationship between antecedences and intentions to avoid foreign brands.

The finding that undesired self-congruence is the strongest predictor of brand avoidance across the markets reinforces the importance of brand image congruence with the target audience. Considering the negative effect of social influence, especially on social media (i.e. Facebook and Twitter), this finding cautions managers to constantly monitor the prevailing negative word of mouth (online or offline) about the brand to mitigate its potential effect.

Drawing on social identity theory, this study explores the identity-based pre-purchase determinants of brand avoidance at the country level and at the individual level. These determinants have never been explored yet in the context of brand avoidance.

Previous literature suggests that people might purchase symbolic products to signal their social identity. However, in the organizational context, subordinates as customers might choose products with less brand prestige than what they want and can afford, just to make sure their choices are below the invisible “red-line” set by the brands of their supervisors. The authors term the phenomenon as “boss ceiling effect,” and term the behavior that people often downgrade their original choice to make sure the brand prestige is lower than that of the product owned by their boss as “downgrading behavior,” which have not been explored and well explained by existing literature so far. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors conduct qualitative study to explore the existence of boss ceiling effect and providing possible influential factors of brand downgrading attitude. The quantitative study empirically examines the relationships among undesired self, perceived risk, organizational culture balance, and downgrading attitude and intension.

The authors find that undesired self-congruence and perceived risk are positively related to the downgrading attitude. In addition, the culture balance directly affects the brand downgrading attitude negatively and also moderates the relationship between undesired self-congruence and downgrading attitude positively and the relationship between perceived risk and downgrading attitude negatively.

The authors contribute to both organizational culture research and symbolic consumption research by considering symbolic consumption behavior in organization context. It is of great practical implications for marketers of symbolic consumption to understand the downgrading behavior.

Consumer demand for authentic brands is steadily rising. With increased pressure to accommodate this demand, researchers and marketers seek to understand how to influence a brand’s perceived authenticity. The purpose of this paper is to build a link between previous research on authenticity and thus gain a deeper understanding of the influencing factors of brand authenticity and its consumer outcomes.

Building on an extensive literature review, the authors identify various antecedents of brand authenticity that are closely connected with the brand’s past, its virtuousness, consumers’ self-identification with the brand perceiver’s own self and individuals representing the brand, as well as relational outcomes as consequences of a brand’s perceived authenticity. As brand authenticity is a subjective construct, the authors include brand involvement to test for moderator effects. For data collection, they conduct an online survey that generates 509 datasets. To test the hypotheses, the authors use structural equation modeling.

The results demonstrate that brand authenticity can be influenced by the identified variables (i.e. brand heritage, brand nostalgia, brand commercialization, brand clarity, brand’s social commitment, brand legitimacy, actual self-congruence and employee’s passion). Moreover, brand authenticity positively affects brand relationship quality, which in turn positively influences consumers’ behavioral intentions. The analyzed relationships do not vary due to consumer-specific characteristics (i.e. brand involvement).

In sum, the results regarding the antecedents of brand authenticity demonstrate that a company can influence brand authenticity through different approaches, and that it is therefore important to analyze which of the identified antecedents brand management should manipulate to positively impact the perception of the brand’s authenticity. In addition, the findings confirm the positive consequences on consumer behavior ascribed to the authenticity concept by marketing literature.

This study aims to broaden understanding of why customers engage in helping and feedback citizenship behaviours. Beyond traditional attitude–behaviour relationships, limited insight is available on the additional role of symbolic factors, such as self-congruence perceptions, in motivating citizenship behaviours. Literature further suggests self-monitoring affects social behaviours, yet extant research has not accounted for this personality trait’s moderating influence on customer helping and feedback citizenship behaviours. Accordingly, a research model is developed, providing novel insight into factors promoting helping and feedback citizenship behaviours and the moderating role of self-monitoring in a ride-hailing service context.

The research is guided by self-monitoring literature and the social exchange and similarity-attraction theories. Survey data from 609 ride-hailing customers in an emerging market country is analysed using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling, and the chi-square difference test.

This study shows that perceived justice (a cognitive attitudinal factor) influences helping citizenship intention in the low self-monitoring group, while self-congruity (a symbolic factor) affects helping and feedback citizenship intention in the high self-monitoring group. Affective commitment towards the ride-hailing brand (an affective attitudinal factor) does not impact customer citizenship intentions.

Although customers may be interested in brands’ functional and symbolic benefits, positive attitudes about the service experienced motivate low self-monitors, while a symbolic-driven factor like self-congruence is more successful in motivating high self-monitors to engage in customer citizenship behaviours.

Novel insight is obtained into the additional influence of self-congruity on customer citizenship behaviours, a neglected factor in extant research involving customer citizenship behaviours that is explained by the similarity-attraction theory. Furthermore, this study provides a pioneering view of the relevance of the self-monitoring theory in moderating customer citizenship behaviours, specifically in ride-hailing services.