• Journal of the East Asian Society of Dietary Life
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.120-132
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate thet 5 dimensions of brand personality that could affect brand attachment, and actual and ideal self-congruence in the family restaurant. Also, this study investigated the effects of actual and ideal self-congruence on brand attachment. Questionnaires were given to a sample of customers who visited one of the 4 famous national brands of family restaurants in Daegu. A total of 332 questionnaires were analyzed with SPSS/$PC^+$and LISREL. There were four major empirical research findings. First, sincerity, competence, sophistication and ruggedness affected brand attachment. And second, sincerity, competence and sophistication affected actual self-congruence. Third, sincerity and sophistication affected ideal self-congruence. And fourth, actual self-congruence affected brand attachment. However, the excitement dimension of brand personality did not affect brand attachment,; dimensions of excitement and ruggedness did not affect actual self-congruence,; dimensions of excitement, competence and ruggedness did not affect ideal self-congruence. Also, ideal self-congruence did not affect brand attachment. Based on these findings, marketers of family restaurants were recommended to strengthen the dimensions of sincerity, competence, and sophistication, and to weaken the ruggedness dimension.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.373-381
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• 2016

This study examined the interaction of nostalgia and self-congruence on consumer behavior. We proposed that nostalgia make consumers' brand attitude and purchase intention more positive when the level of congruence between the brand and consumer's ideal self-image is high, irregardless of the level of actual self congruence. 283 middle-aged people participated and 2(nostalgia: stimuli vs. control) X 2(ideal self-congruence: high vs. low) between subject design is used. The result showed the interaction effect of nostalgia and ideal self congruence. Nostalgia-primed (vs. control) participants reported higher brand attitude and purchase intention to the ideal self-congruent brand. Finally the theoretcal and practical implications and limitations of this study are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.36 no.11
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• pp.1137-1147
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• 2012

Self-congruency plays an important role in the context of mothers' shopping for children's clothing because purchasers are inconsistent with users. This study incorporates three dimensions of self-congruencies (congruency between children's image perceived by their mothers and brand image, congruency between mothers' actual self-image and brand image, and congruency between mothers' ideal self-image and brand image) due to purchaser-user inconsistency in children's clothing consumption. A total of 574 mothers with children aged 6 to 10 participated in a web-based survey. Descriptive statistical analysis, factor analysis, reliability analysis and multiple regression analysis were conducted. Self-brand image congruency variables have a different influence on brand attitudes when mothers purchase children's clothing. Brand attitude is influenced positively only when the perceived children's image coincides with brand image and when mothers' ideal self-image corresponds to brand image. In contrast, mothers' actual self-image and brand image congruence negatively influence brand attitude. Further investigation indicates that there are different effects of dimensions of self-congruency on brand attitude according to the characteristics of mothers and their children. This study suggests that when there is purchaser-user inconsistency, different types of image congruence has to be implemented to assess the impact on brand attitudes.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.382-391
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• 2015

People are exposed to diverse images and naturally find images to express themselves to others for personalsatisfaction. They present ideal images that they desire to obtain or actual images that they already have. People find differences between ideal images and actual images as well astry to overcome differences by managing appearance or purchasing fashion items. The congruence between real and ideal self-images and perceived body images stimulate clothing involvement or consumer confidence to influence fashion innovativeness and fashion opinion leadership. Fashion leaders are known for confidence when making buying decisions on new fashion products and are more likely to influence other consumers to buy new items. This study useda structural equation model to understand the influence of perceived self and body image on clothing involvement and consumer confidence as well as define how perceived images influence fashion leadership through clothing involvement and consumer confidence. The results of this study indicated that self-image congruence has a positive impact on social body image and personal body image. A positive influence of perceived body image on clothing involvement and consumer confidence was also detected. Fashion opinion leadership could be explained by clothing involvement and consumer confidence; however, fashion innovativeness could only be explained by consumer confidence.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.29-62
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• 2012

As distribution environment is changing rapidly and competition is more intensive in the channel of distribution, the importance of retailer image and retailer equity is increasing as a different competitive advantages. Also, consumers are not functionally oriented and that their behavior is significantly affected by the symbols such as retailer image which identify retailer in the market place. That is, consumers do not choose products or retailers for their material utilities but consume the symbolic meaning of those products or retailers as expressed in their self images. The concept of self-image congruence has been utilized by marketers and researchers as an aid in better understanding how consumers identify themselves with the brands they buy and the retailer they patronize. Although self-image congruity theory has been tested across many product categories, the theory has not been tested extensively in the retailing. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of self image congruence between retailer image and self image of consumer on retailer equity such as retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty. The purpose of this study is to find out whether retailer-self image congruence can be a new antecedent of retailer equity. In addition, this study tries to examine how four-dimensional retailer equity constructs (retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty) affect customers' repatronage intention. For this study, data were gathered by survey and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study was 254. The reliability of the all seven dimensions was estimated with Cronbach's alpha, composite reliability values and average variance extracted values. We determined whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity and discriminant validity by Exploratory factor analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted values exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the AMOS 18.0. As expected, the image congruence hypotheses were supported. The greater the degree of congruence between retailer image and self-image, the more favorable were consumers' retailer evaluations. The all two retailer-self image congruence (actual self-image congruence and ideal self-image congruence) affected customer based retailer equity. This result means that retailer-self image congruence is important cue for customers to estimate retailer equity. In other words, consumers are often more likely to prefer products and retail stores that have images similar to their own self-image. Especially, it appeared that effect for the ideal self-image congruence was consistently larger than the actual self-image congruence on the retailer equity. The results mean that consumers prefer or search for stores that have images compatible with consumer's perception of ideal-self. In addition, this study revealed that customers' estimations toward customer based retailer equity affected the repatronage intention. The results showed that all four dimensions (retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty) had positive effect on the repatronage intention. That is, management and investment to improve image congruence between retailer and consumers' self make customers' positive evaluation of retailer equity, and then the positive customer based retailer equity can enhance the repatonage intention. And to conclude, retailer's image management is an important part of successful retailer performance management, and the retailer-self image congruence is an important antecedent of retailer equity. Therefore, it is more important to develop and improve retailer's image similar to consumers' image. Given the pressure to provide increased image congruence, it is not surprising that retailers have made significant investments in enhancing the fit between retailer image and self image of consumer. The enhancing such self-image congruence may allow marketers to target customers who may be influenced by image appeals in advertising.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.377-388
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• 2016

The purposes of this study are; first, to supply useful suggestions for the market segmentation of the Chinese market according to individual psychological variables(self-congruence) of customers. Second, it figures out the relative importance of actual self-congruence and ideal self-congruence. Lastly, it reveals whether there are any differences in the preference of attributes according to the popular cultural involvement. According to the results, actual self-congruence had a positive influence on the contents factor evaluation while ideal self-congruence had positive effect on the human and cultural factors evaluation. Also, the human and cultural factor had a positive influence on the purchase intention, as well as content factor and cultural factor had the influence on the word-of-mouth. In addition, the group of highly interested in the involvement at the popular culture was significantly higher in the evaluation on the human and contents factor than the low group.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.97-120
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• 2015

This study examined the role and relationship among cognitive response(attractiveness, familiarity, actual self-congruence, ideal self-congruence and sympathy) factors, emotional response(empathy, flow, affection) factors, identification mediating between cognitive and emotional response, and interactivity. Hypotheses based on literature reviews were analyzed and according to the results, all of hypotheses except two hypotheses were supported. Firstly, the results revealed that except characteristic attractiveness and actual self-congruence, story attractiveness, characteristic familiarity, story familiarity, and ideal self-congruence influenced on sympathy positively. Secondly, this study examined the role and relationship between identification mediating between cognitive and emotional response and interactivity. As a result, identification and interactivity mediated with sympathy and empathy had positive effects. Finally, in respect of emotional responses empathy, flow, and affection had positive effects.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.148-157
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• 2016

In this study, the notion of payment intention price was introduced and examined in relation with self-image congruence, clothing preference and two types of reference price: expected price and fair price. One hundred samples of female collegiate students participated in the group survey and responded to the instrument including variables of clothing image evaluation, clothing preference, reference price, payment intention price toward a one-piece dress as the stimulus, and ideal self-image perception. Descriptive statistics, correlations, and regressions were applied on data analysis. The results were as follow. Payment intention price was determined by clothing preference and fair price, and the explaining power of fair price was greater than clothing preference. One confirmatory path was observed that self-image congruence effects clothing preference, and then clothing preference effects payment intention price. The other confirmatory path was from expected price to fair price and fair price to payment intention price.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.261-272
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to examine the moderating effect of emotional bond in the effect of the congruence of self-image and the team's loyalty to professional baseball spectators, to enhance the effectiveness of emotional bond between the club and the spectator, and to suggest implications for establishing the club's brand marketing strategy. For this purpose, a survey was conducted on 500 professional baseball spectators, and the results of correlation analysis, stepwise regression analysis and hierarchical regression analysis using SPSS 21.0 based on 450 collected data are as follows. First, among the professional baseball spectators and the team's self-image, the realistic self-image factor had a significant effect on the club's loyalty. Second, it was confirmed that the congruence of realistic self-image moderated the effect of congruence of realistic self-image on club loyalty. This result shows that the formation of emotional bond has no influence on the congruence of ideal self-image and is related to the realistic self-image that the club is showing at present. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a marketing strategy that can highlight this effect by considering these points.

• Korean Journal of Artificial Intelligence
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.11-18
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• 2020

In this paper, it is to identify the effects of differences in interpretation levels depending on the type of brand association and the brain psychological distance on the evaluation of the product of that brand through two experiments. To test our hypotheses empirically, we conducted online survey. We addressed the hypotheses involving the general and relative impact of actual and ideal self-congruence on emotional brand attachment (H1) and explored the effect of product involvement as the moderating variable (H1-1 and H1-2). The goal of this research was to validate the results from involving our basic model and to explore the impact of two additional moderating variables (self-esteem and public self-consciousness: H2). We followed the same procedure. This finding is theoretical to the extent of the interpretation level theory in brand association research by applying the interpretation level theory to the brand association, and provides the meaning that, in practice, it is necessary to utilize the message of different types of brain psychological distance depending on the brand association characteristics that the brand has in defining the brand. In particular, it was confirmed that functional brand associations and symbolic brand annals have representational harmonization, respectively, depending on the low and high levels of interpretation levels.