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This study aims to integrate Roccas and Brewer’s (2002) social identity complexity theory with the brand symbolism literature to propose a new construct: brand identity complexity (BIC). Different than previous conceptualizations of identity complexity which focus on the degree of internal differentiation of the personal self, BIC focuses on the degree of complexity in the social self and is defined as a consumer’s subjective representation and psychological state of belongingness to multiple identity-constructing brand ingroups. BIC impacts the adoption of new brands as they relate to the social self.

Three experiments were performed to test BIC’s predictive power. Study 1 measures BIC and tests its influence on the adoption of new brands positioned as unique. Study 2 manipulates BIC through priming and tests its influence on the adoption of new brands that appeal to independence. Study 3 also manipulates BIC and examines its influence on the adoption of brand extensions.

Study 1 demonstrates that high BIC consumers are more likely to adopt a new brand that appeals to a unique social self. Study 2 shows that high BIC individuals are more likely to adopt a new brand that appeals to an independent self. Study 3 shows that high BIC consumers are more likely to adopt a brand extension with a low fit to the parent category. All three studies offer evidence of the mediating role of identity-driven payoffs.

The findings suggest that individuals perceive their multiple brand ingroups to be more or less complex. This outcome merges the social identity theory with consumer–brand relationship research and adds to an emerging stream of research that explores personal, situational and cultural differences in the social self and its relation to commercial offers.

Marketers can benefit from the findings by better understanding which brand appeals will be more effective with target consumers and under what conditions.

This research develops a conceptual framework for understanding the development of brand ingroup-based identity complexity.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the complexity of how spectators' multiple identities influence their behavioral intention. Specifically, the authors examined the effects of spectators' place identification, team identification and an interaction effect on attendance intention using social identity complexity framework.

Data were collected from spectators attending professional baseball games in South Korea. While 550 questionnaires were returned, 475 (86.36%) were used in the analysis after excluding incomplete responses. The research model was tested using latent moderated structural equations modeling.

Results indicated place identification only influenced attendance intentions through an interaction effect, while team identity directly affects attendance intention. Highly identified sport consumers intended to attend future games regardless of place identification, while the sense of love for the team's home region motivated low-identified sport consumers more to attend future games.

The findings of this research led to understanding the relationships between multiple identities and behavioral intention and provided the spectator sport industry with valuable strategies to manage their sport consumers.

This chapter examines the complexity of global leaders themselves. As global leadership research has begun to move beyond a limiting overemphasis on skills and competencies, we merge one focus on the deep structure of leader cognition with a focus on cultural identity that has matured largely independently. In so doing, we seek to push the field toward answering the broader question of what makes a global leader sufficiently complex to handle the vast complexities of the role. We place the construct of self-concept complexity as central to the performance of global leaders in ways ranging from organizational performance to social and community responsibility. By advancing our understanding of the role of self-concept complexity in driving global leadership outcomes, this research seeks to spur further theoretical development and practical application toward a deeper comprehension of the complexity of truly global leaders.

This chapter disrupts the common notion that identity can be understood through the use of categories. Categorical terms like gay, straight, man, or woman often mask the complexity of curriculum making and identity-making. Curriculum making and identity-making are narrative terms used to understand the dynamic, relational, and on-going process of making meaning about people, things, contexts, and identity through experience. Identity making, understood narratively as the composition of stories to live by, allows us to image diverse communities, contexts, and experiences that uniquely shape the stories that people live and tell. Inquiring into the experiences of two research participants, I begin the chapter by thinking with Calle’s stories of experience to explore the limited and limiting categorical stories of identity. Then, I consider Jamie’s stories to live by, attending to the role of his contexts and communities in the composition of his stories to live by. In doing so, I seek to further map out the narrative geography of curriculum making and identity-making places and communities for individuals who compose diverse stories to live by. Building on previous research findings that contexts shape the composition of stories to live by as identity is negotiated through these dominant stories as an individual’s ontology, his/her story of the world and self in it, is constituted in part, by these dominant stories; here, I argue that contexts that allow for diverse stories to be told are those that attend to experience rather than clinging to familiar dominant stories.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate insights into the identity construction and development of a selected single male individual in Cape Town, South Africa. It aims at increasing the in-depth understanding of the complexities of identity construction in a transcultural setting and provides emic perspectives on a micro-individual level over a period of ten years.

This research study is based on the post-modernist premise by considering phenomenological and interpretative paradigms most relevant. It is a longitudinal study, conducted with a single individual over a period of ten years by using various research methods as well as triangulation of methods, theories and data. Data were analysed through content analysis.

This research provides in-depth information on the struggle of a single person to construct and re-construct his identity and find answers to the question “Who am I?” in the multifaceted and hypercomplex transcultural environment of Cape Town. It shows the attempts to developing a coherent multiple identity over a period of ten years, reconstructing the past, creating the present and envisioning the future.

This research has practical implications for practitioners working with identity (development) in transcultural settings. It provides important in-depth information on “nomadic identities” for coaching, counselling or therapies in transcultural settings.

This paper provides new and original insights into long-term identity development of an individual in a transcultural urban space.

A narrative inquiry was conducted to explore the complexities of learning English and Korean as subject matter in cross-cultural contexts in contributing to teacher identity, with possible tensions of identity teachers experience as ethnic Koreans teaching at an international school in Korea that promotes non-Korean, international education in English as a “language of inclusion” and instruction. With expansions of international schools in South Korea, also growing are numbers of Korean teachers teaching at such schools as returnees, individuals with cross-cultural experience. Stories of one Korean language and literature teacher with international schooling experience were examined.

While identifying the practical benefits of acquiring English, she expresses her concern for the presumed loss of Korean as a product of the prioritized use of English on campus. Equally recognized are the diverse opportunities not commonly available at Korean public schools that the participant upholds from her own experience. She acknowledged that her opportunities for the development of English language skills to a high level of proficiency through international education is not commonly accessible to all students in the Korean public school system. She also considered possible impacts associated with prioritizing the use of English over Korean in her international education experience, including their influence on: her sense of identity as a teacher and as Korean; her cultural knowledge as Korean; and her teacher knowledge as she supports her students' learning of English as subject matter in ways that might, in turn, also impact their sense of identity as Korean.

This paper aims to provide an insight into the complexities of the identity work performed by independent coaches, based on an investigation into their “lived experiences”. The emerging coaching industry has created opportunities for individuals wishing to pursue a career as independent executive/career coaches.

This exploratory investigation was conducted using the principles of grounded theory, drawing on insights from “knowledgeable informants” (18 in total) gained through interviews and focus group discussion.

Despite the attractiveness of pursuing an independent career, the findings surfaced a number of tensions in the way that independent coaches transform and perform their identity. One tension involves balancing notions of self-identity and “ideal work” with presenting a credible self to different client groups, the purchasers of their services.

As the research focused on a specific category of independent practitioners, more research is required to assess the generalizability of the findings to other categories of practitioners.

A framework illuminating the processual nature of identity work among independent coaches is presented. This could be used to inform developmental conversations with aspiring independent coaches, or to support the content on formal coaching programmes.

In drawing attention to the complexities of identity work performed by independent coaches, given the contingencies affecting their work, this research offers a different contribution to the coaching literature.

This paper aims to offer a novel participatory visual research method, the mapping of identity (MOI) protocol that embraces the complex nature of contemporary consumers’ lived reality.

The MOI protocol is a two-phase methodology. The first phase includes collage creation, based on a taxonomy of attachments, followed by an elicitation interview structured around the participant’s collage. In phase two, the categories elicited in phase one are synthesised into key themes in collaboration between the researcher and the participant.

MOI methodology provides an effective platform for participants to bring together disjointed memories, fragments and thoughts. Two individual cases are presented that seem similar on the surface; however, when deconstructing these narratives, their lived experiences and the effect that these narratives have on the construction of the self are very different. Treating participants as co-researchers and letting the choices they make in their collage creation lead the interview empowers the participant and enables the researcher to better understand their complex identity articulations.

This study contributes a visual methodology capable of exploring and celebrating the complexities of self-identity.

MOI is a useful tool for facilitating self-exploration in liquid markets. Marketing experts should provide materials that are not too confining and facilitate consumers in expressing multiple voices.

The participatory nature of MOI methodology allows for the emergence of stories from those that might otherwise go unheard, helping to understand unfamiliar and sometimes unrecognised identities.

Marketing literature recognises the complex nature of contemporary lived reality; however, some of the intricate aspects of this reality have not been dealt with in all their complexity. A reason for this gap is the paucity of suitable research methods. The MOI protocol presented in this paper addresses this, providing an effective visual tool to explore the complex web of contemporary consumer life.

Stories to live by, a narrative conception of identity, are multiple and diverse. As such, I argue that a narrative approach to research allows for complex understanding(s) of people’s lives and provokes meaning-making for participants and researchers. In this chapter, I think with the stories of Mr CEO, a research participant, to understand better the ways that his competing stories to live by are held in tension through his life experience. Mr CEO identified as African American, male, and gay, for lack of a better term. Moreover, Mr CEO’s experience growing up in a conservative African American Christian church shaped his identity-making and added complexity to his sense-making around his multiple stories to live by. I inquire into the ways Mr CEO restoried his stories to live by as they conflicted in his life experience. Mr CEO’s process of seeking narrative coherence among his many stories to live by allowed him to make sense of these dissonant stories. Similarly, it was difficult for Mr CEO to fit in with many of the familiar communities related to his dissonant stories of identity (church, gay, African American communities). As a result of his shifting stories, it became necessary for him to find new contexts and relationships that allowed for multiple and diverse plotlines. Mr CEO engaged in the process of community making as he sought to find relationships that acknowledged and valued his racial, religious, and sexual identity.