‘You’re not perfect, but you’re still my favourite.’ Brand affective congruence as a new determinant of self-brand congruence

Consumers tend to prefer brands whose image is congruent with their actual or their ideal self. Despite the critical importance of self-brand congruence, the literature currently exclusively relies on self-reported self-brand congruence, and lacks a measure that sheds light on its determinants. In the current research we propose and test a new determinant of self-brand congruence: brand affective congruence (BAC). BAC is based on how people intuitively assess affective meaning of different cultural concepts on the three dimensions of evaluation, potency and activity. Using an empirical study, we find that BAC is an effective determinant of self-brand congruence and has positive downstream effects on brand-self connection, brand trust, purchase intentions, and willingness to pay a higher price.