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This study aims to examine the effects of three self‐congruity constructs: the brand's personality congruity (BPC), the brand's user imagery congruity and the brand's usage imagery congruity, in consumers' attitude and brand loyalty toward two luxury fashion brands.

Using a sample of Australian consumers, this study examines two luxury fashion brands (CK and Chanel) from two product categories, watches and sunglasses. Structural equation modeling is used to test the hypotheses.

This study finds that user and usage imagery congruity are stronger predictors for brand attitude and brand loyalty than BPC in the context of the luxury fashion brands tested. Both user and usage imagery congruity have significant effects in brand attitude and brand loyalty in most analyses. This study finds no significant effect of BPC in either brand attitude or brand loyalty for the two brands tested.

Future studies should include more populations, product categories and more brands in each category.

Symbolic benefits are key motivations behind luxury brand purchases. Symbolic benefits are from non‐product‐related attributes like imagery. One important implication of the study is that user and usage imagery are more important to build than attempts to develop a brand's personality. Because most luxury brands market in multiple product categories, attention should be paid to the core perceptions of user and usage imagery for the brand when designing communication strategies for different categories.

This study provides the first evidence that these self‐congruity concepts may represent different imageries that lead to different effects in brand attitude and brand loyalty. Findings from this study add to the understanding of the consumption of luxury brands.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the brand personality and brand user‐imagery constructs in congruity theory to examine their relationship in the image congruence model as a basis of modeling brand attitudes for publicly and privately consumed brands.

A total of 272 surveys measured subjects' self‐image perceptions and subjects' perceptions of brand personality and user‐imagery. Congruence measures were used as indicators of the difference between respondent self‐image and each brand's image, and served as independent variables in stepwise regressions with brand attitude as the dependent variable.

The results indicated that, for publicly consumed brands, user‐imagery‐based congruence measures contributed more often to the explanatory power of the model. For privately consumed brands, brand personality congruity produced significant regressions but did not account for a large portion of explained variance, while user‐imagery only entered one private brand model.

Brand personality and brand user‐imagery are often used interchangeably in self‐congruity theory research. Although both constructs have received past research attention, no studies have compared them in the same study. The study fills the gap in the literature and enhances the usefulness of the self‐brand congruity model, providing a knowledge base for determining an overall brand positioning strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if accessible luxury fashion brands discriminate overweight and obese consumers.

The physical sizes of garments are surveyed in-store and compared to the body sizes of the population. A gap analysis is carried out in order to determine whether the supply of clothes match the demand of each market segment.

The surveyed accessible luxury garments come in very small sizes compared to the individuals that make up the population.

The survey is limited to London stores but the garment sizes are compared to the British population. It is therefore possible that the discrepancies between assortments and the population are in part attributable to geographic and demographic factors. The study’s results are, however, so strikingly clear that even if some of the effects were due to extraneous variables, it would be hard to disregard the poor match between overweight and obese women and the clothes offered to them.

For symbolic/expressive brands that are conspicuously consumed, that narrowly target distinct and homogenous groups of people in industries where elitist practices are acceptable, companies can build brands via customer rejection.

The results highlight ongoing discrimination of overweight and obese fashion consumers.

The study is the first to provide quantitative evidence for brand building via customer rejection, and it delineates under which conditions this may occur. This extends the theory of typical user imagery.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the weight of ideal users affects the perception of mass market fashion brands.

An experiment was carried out in which 640 university students replied to a web survey, rating the brand personality of jeans and shirts according to Aaker's Big Five construct. The garments were worn by thin, overweight, and obese models.

The findings show that consumers’ impressions of mass market fashion brands are significantly affected by the weight of ideal users. Slender models lead to the most positive brand perception followed by obese models. Overweight user imagery is for pure fashion brand building the least attractive kind.

A limitation of this study is the use of convenient student samples. Consequently, the generalization of the results beyond this convenience sample may be limited. It is further possible, even probable, that high fashion would suffer more from the negative imagery of overweight and obese users than mass market fashion. It would therefore be interesting to replicate this experiment using clothes of higher fashion grade and price.

The demonstrated effects of user imagery support the industry practice of slim ideal female imagery.

The results inform the debate over skinny models vs real women in advertising.

Previous research regarding the effectiveness of real women in advertising has been inconclusive. This paper demonstrates not only that model weight affects consumers’ brand perception, but also how.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of verbal-imagery cognitive styles of information searching behavior of users in using the Web.

In all, 44 participants were recruited for this study. The participants’ cognitive styles were measured by using Riding's Cognitive Style Analysis test. Three search tasks were designed based on Kim's search task definitions. Moreover, an individual lab session was arranged and then participants’ memos were analyzed using content analysis.

In all, 48 strategies in four categories of behaviors in searching the Web were identified. There were associations between users’ cognitive styles and their information searching behavior. The participants’ selection of the search initiation behaviors varied, so that imagers suffered from more varied initial behavior than verbalizers. The verbalizers tended to search in a narrow area, then broadening the area and following structured navigation and reading behavior to process information, while imagers tended to search in a general area, then narrowing down the search and adopting mixed navigational styles and mixed behaviors to process information. This study revealed that there was a difference in search performance of verbalizers and imagers descriptively, as verbalizers spent more time compared to imagers and imagers visited more nodes than verbalizers for the tasks completion. In addition, the task was an important variable influencing the search performance. Based on the key findings (search initiation behaviors, formulating search queries, navigational behaviors, information processing behaviors), a conceptual pattern of Web searching and cognitive styles is presented.

The study provides a new understanding of Web users’ information search behavior based on cognitive styles which contributes to the theoretical basis of Web search research. It also raises various questions within the context of user studies

The paper adopted a mixed approach in the area of information searching on the Web. A valuable contribution lies in the methods developed.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

You are the son or daughter of a well‐heeled family and studying at an exclusive and expensive university. Your affluence is such that your watch and sunglasses are more likely to be branded with the Calvin Klein or Chanel name than with that of a cheaper, downmarket product. But why do people choose such brands – apart from the fact they can afford them – at a time when brands are becoming less and less different in terms of product attributes? How can marketers of luxury goods develop or enhance brand images via non‐product attributes? It's a challenge which is becoming increasingly important for marketing any brand, luxury or not.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.

Over the past 20 years the commercial importance of services has been realised, highlighting the importance of research to understand service brands and their meaning for consumers. However, to date, the branding models developed lack empirical testing, are derived from the perspective of brand practitioners rather than consumers, and pay little attention to the branding of services. This study seeks consumer‐based information via qualitative and quantitative methods regarding brand dimensions that hold meaning to consumers for branded services. The results indicate a number of key dimensions that are important to consumers for both goods and services, such as core product/service, experience with brand and image of user. Dimensions such as feelings and self‐image congruence were not found to be important, while word‐of‐mouth, servicescape, and employees held importance for branded services. The results also indicate significant relationships for brand dimension importance and brand associations, associations and attitudes, and attitudes and intentions. The results suggest important implications for brand managers, in addition to providing a platform on which future research can be built to further understand service branding.

Research, like Guinness, is good for you. “Pure Genius”, Guinness's latest advertising campaign, appears set to become another famous phrase in Guinness advertising. The research involved has pointed up a useful model of the branding process — the methods and analyses of which (including “yolk” and “shell” values) may be helpful to the wider theory and practice in future.

The study aims to investigate the psychological mechanism that motivates consumers to pay more for a preferred brand that reflects their actual or ideal self-concept, by examining the shift in attention between consumer’s present, future, and past moments.

First, in a survey setting, the study identifies the relationship between temporal focus and self-congruence. Subsequently, we conduct three experiments to capture the effects of temporal focus on brand preference and willingness to pay (WTP). In these experiments, we manipulate consumers’ self-congruence and temporal focus.

The findings show that consumers with a present focus (distant future and distant past foci) tend to evaluate a brand more preferably when the brand serves to reflect their actual (ideal) selves. However, in the absence of present focus consumers’ WTP is more for a brand that reflects their ideal selves.

The study does not have an actual measure on consumers’ WTP; instead we use single-item measure.

This study sheds new light on branding strategy. The results suggest that authentic and aspirational branding strategies are relevant to publicly consumed products. Brand managers could incorporate consumers’ temporal focus into branding strategy that could significantly influence consumer preference and WTP for their brands.

This study expands our understanding of brand usage imagery congruity by showing that temporal focus is an important determinant of self-congruence. In this regard, this study empirically investigates the relationship of temporal focus, self-congruence, brand preference, and WTP. It further reveals that mere brand preference does not necessarily lead consumers to pay more for symbolic brands.