Multicultural advertising: Impact of consumers’ need to belong and brand use on self-brand connection and communal-brand connection

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of need to belong and brand use as an identity signal in multiethnic advertising compared to other advertising approaches. The results indicate that consumers' need to belong has a positive direct relationship with self-brand connection and communal-brand connection for ads featuring ethnically mismatched models but not for ads featuring ethnically matched or multiethnic models. Additionally, brand use as an identity signal had a weak relationship with self-brand connection (with 90% significance) for the mismatched condition but not for the matched or multiethnic condition, and no significant relationship was found with communal-brand connection in any of the three conditions. Moreover, for all three conditions, self-brand connection (but not communal-brand connection) had a significant relationship with purchase intention. Marketing practitioners may benefit from this research by understanding how consumer traits influence consumer-brand relationships in reaction to three different advertising approaches (i.e., matched, mismatched, and multiethnic approach).