The role of actual and ideal self- congruence in Brand humanisation.

The creation of emotional attachment among consumers is a key branding requirement in today’s marketing world. One way to achieve this is to humanise the brand/product’s personality to match consumers’ self-congruence, so the aim of this research is to investigate whether a humanised brand will increase the consumer’s emotional attachment by the consumer’s actual self-congruence or by ideal self-congruence. Previous studies have encouraged marketing practitioners and scholars to introduce brand humanisation strategies in marketing communication that will drive consumers to communicate with brands. This marketing communication technique consists of a set of humanlike features, indicating a mind and personality. It is designed to allow the consumer to perceive a brand as humanoid and to create a positive emotional response towards it. Most forms of humanisation allow consumers to perceive a brand as human under specific conditions. It is clear from the previous literature and the marketing perspective that consumers most frequently, but not always, consider a humanised brand as some sort of human-like being. This belief has encouraged scholars to formulate a new marketing communication technique and concept, known as ‘humanising branding’. This thesis discusses the main conceptualizing models of brand humanization and practical models in the field. These models have affected the field, demonstrating the value of brand humanization and the unclear definitions of using brand humanization in academic research and in marketing communication. To the marketing literature and knowledge of academics and practitioners the study contributes by developing a model of brand humanisation. This thesis confronts two research questions and thereby contributes to the marketing literature and knowledge for academics and practitioners. First, it contributes to the literature on consumer brand relationship by using an experiment among participants from Cranfield University to examine the impact of humanised branding on consumer emotional attachment. The results show that a humanised brand has a significant impact on consumer emotional attachment, whereas a non-humanised brand does not. Second, the research contributes to the literature on self-congruence by an experiment among participants from Cranfield University which examines the impact of humanised branding on consumer emotional attachment through the use of actual and ideal self-congruence. The results show that both humanised and non-humanised brands make an impact on consumer actual self-congruence and that when the humanised brand matches the consumer’s actual self-congruence, such an impact is likely to increase the consumer’s emotional attachment. A humanised brand is likely to have an impact on consumer ideal self-congruence, but it is unlikely to increase consumer emotional attachment when it matches the consumer ideal self-congruence. The thesis discusses the main managerial and academic implications of this finding.