In their continuous search for improved explanations of why consumers engage with certain brands more than with others, academics and managers have placed significant importance on self-brand congruence theory, which suggests that consumers are drawn to brands with characteristics that align with their own characteristics. Although this theory has been extensively investigated and supported by previous research, it has hitherto been assumed that the alignment of characteristics exhibits a similarity configuration, that is, consumers are drawn to brands with traits that mirror their own traits. By adopting a relational view of consumer-brand interactions and drawing from the literature on interpersonal relationships, specifically from theories of interpersonal attraction, the thesis explores the possibility that besides similarity, self-brand personality alignment may also exhibit a complementarity configuration, whereby consumers are drawn to brands with traits that complement their own. Using a two-phase empirical study of mixed methods [in-depth interviews and online survey (n=206)], the thesis first explores the structure of consumers’ perceptions of their own personalities and those of their favourite brands using Exploratory Factor Analysis. Results reveal that although brand personality has the same five factor structure as human personality, the composition of dimensions is distinct. The patterns of alignment between the two sets of traits are then examined through Canonical Correlation Analysis, which reveals the existence of both similarity and complementarity configurations in self-brand personality alignment. A new method for measuring the magnitude of self-brand personality alignment is then devised, which captures both configurations. The predictive power of this new measure is then compared against existing, similarity-based measures for a range of desirable brand behaviours, using Discriminant Analysis and Linear Regression. Results indicate the new measure performs well, especially for emotionally-related brand behaviours.

Consumer decisions are largely influenced by prior experiences via memory. Consumer research is limited in its consideration of the separate memory system conceptualisations dominant in psychology, and rather has primarily focused on semantic memory (SM). As Autobiographical Memory (AM) may equally affect one’s brand consumption decisions, it is critical to integrate AM into brand-related memory studies for a complete understanding of the consumer learning and decision-making process. The study conceptualises affective, self-relevant brand episodes as Brand-Related Autobiographical Memory (BRAM), and storage of abstract brand knowledge as Brand-Related Semantic Memory (BRSM). The conceptual review identified hypothesised relationships between BRAM, BRSM, self-brand congruence and affective brand commitment. Within a positivist paradigm, the study employed methodological triangulation with qualitative interviews, functional magnetic resonanace imaging (fMRI) experiment and a survey to collect data. Findings suggest that brand memories are stored in AM and SM, and brand memories that are in AM are self-relevant and emotion-laden. The construct of Specificity explains the self-brand congruence relationship while BRAM (Vividness and Affect) influence brand commitment. No relationship was discovered between BRSM, self-brand congruence and brand commitment. This is of particular significance as dominant consumer research focuses on semantic memory. The research contributes to marketing theory by: 1). identifying the importance of multiple memory systems in understanding consumers’ decision-making; 2). exploring how BRAM contributes towards emotional decision-making models; 3). identifying the importance of BRAM in self-brand congruence theory and brand commitment decisions; 4). demonstrating the use of nuroimaging (fMRI) methods to study consumer memories and 5). introducing the BRAM scale as a complementary measure to recall and recognition tests.

Att folk inte förstår vad man säger beror på flera olika anledningar. En självklar orsak till att detta är till exempel givetvis om man inte talar samma språk. Men även om man skulle begripa varandra i en konversation betyder inte det att sändarens budskap tolkas på önskat sätt av mottagaren. Kommunikationen är avgörande för att en förståelse mellan två parter ska kunna skapas. Stuart Hall (1973) problematiserar kommunikationsprocessen och kedjan från det att meddelandet produceras till dess distribution och slutliga konsumtion. Kommunikationen mellan kodare och avkodare är aldrig given i sin överenskommelse. Att man talar samma språk betyder följaktligen inte att man förstår varandra fullt ut. Det finns många andra faktorer som påverkar hur meddelandet avkodas av mottagaren. Vi har valt att undersöka hur två hockeyklubbar kommunicerar med sina supportrar. Studiens syfte är att göra en jämförelse mellan de två varumärkena. I respektive varumärkes identitet och image söks likheter och olikheter. Den eventuella varumärkeskongruensen studeras ur ett kommunikativt perspektiv.   Intentionen är att ta reda på hur kommunikativa processer kan påverka varumärkens identitet och image och relationen mellan dem. Det teoretiska ramverk som använts består av marknadskommunikation, encoding och decoding och varumärkesteori. Under varumärkesteorin följer kompletteringar om sport och varumärken, varumärkesidentitet och varumärkesimage. Studien baseras på en kvalitativ och en kvantitativ metod. Den kvalitativa metoden består av gruppintervjuer som utförts för att fastställa varumärkenas identiteter medan den kvantitativa metoden utgörs av enkäter som identifierar varumärkenas image. En av de slutsatser som presenteras i studien är att det både finns kongruens och skillnader angående överensstämmelsen mellan varumärkesidentitet- och image. Sammanfattningsvis går det att konstatera att resurser utgör den stora skillnaden klubbarna mellan i förutsättningen för att mottagarna ska kunna tillgodoses på ett bra sätt. / The reason people don’t understand what others are saying can depend on a lot of things. One obvious reason would be that two individuals don’t speak the same language. Even if the two individuals would understand the words in a conversation, it’s not certain that the meaning of the message reaches the receiver the intended way. The communication settles the agreement for understanding between two parts. Stuart Hall (1973) problematizes the communication process and the chain from when the message is created and coded with meaning, through its distribution until its consumption. The communication between an encoder and a decoder are not ever certain. To not speak the same language is the same as not understanding each other. There are many other factors that influence how the receiver decodes a message.   This thesis aims to identify the brand congruence related to two Swedish ice hockey brands. The intention is to examine how communicative processes can influence the differences between how the brand identity and brand image are interpreted. The theory frame used in the thesis concludes of the following theories; Marketing Communication, Encoding and Decoding and Brand Theory. The Brand Theory is specified within the areas of Sports and Brands, Brand Identity and Brand Image.  The thesis includes both a qualitative and a quantitative method. The qualitative interviews are used to establish the brand identities while the quantitative questionnaire study aims to define the brand images. One of the major conclusions is that there are both congruence and differences in the comparison within both of the brands. Another conclusion is that the differences in how substantial the congruence is relates to resources and the brands background.

Användandet av sociala medier ökar kraftigt och har under de senaste åren blivit en viktig del i människors vardag. Detta ger företag en möjlighet att använda sig av sociala medier i sin marknadsföring och är en av de mest populära strategierna just nu är när företag samarbetar med influencers i sin marknadsföring. Detta kallas influencer marketing. Dock finns det svårigheter för företag att hitta rätt influencer att samarbeta med och det finns olika faktorer som behöver värderas innan ett samarbete startar. Forskningsfrågorna som har besvarats i denna studie är vilka faktorer företag anser är viktigast samt vad konsumenterna anser är viktigt när företag samarbetar med influencers på Instagram. Räckvidd, relevans samt resonans är tre faktorer som tidigare studier visar har betydelse samt är viktiga vid influencer marketing. Studien genomfördes med en kvalitativ ansats i form av fokusgrupp med konsumenter samt intervjuer med marknadsförare som arbetar på företag inom mode- och skönhetsbranschen i Sverige. Denna information utgjorde den empiriska data som studien består av. Resultatet av studien visar att både konsumenterna och företagen inom mode- och skönhetsbranschen värderar faktorn relevans högst. Konsumenterna anser att det viktigaste är att influencern är trovärdig samt kunnig om produkten personen marknadsför, medan företagen värderade högst att influencerns image speglar företagets. Förslag till fortsatt forskning är att studera vad influencers tycker är viktigast när de väljer företag att samarbeta med. Det skulle vara intressant att veta influencernas åsikter angående detta och om även de värderar relevansen högst.

<p>  </p> <p>This study investigates consumers’ moral-decision making process when they become aware of brands’ controversial actions. Specifically, this study aims to understand the effects of consumers’ cognitive and affective responses on their moral judgments after learning about the controversy of brands conducting animal testing, which in turn impacts their brand switching intention. The current study also considers consumers’ approach-avoidance conflicts in the moral-decision making process in which consumers confront moral dilemmas. The particular brands’ controversial action of interest for this study is personal care brands’ conducting animal testing on their products and selling animal-tested products because many believe that animal testing is only vital for biomedical research purposes but not for pursuing beauty purposes. This study builds a conceptual model depicting the consumer moral decision-making process based on Rest's (1994) and Schwartz’s (2015) ethical decision-making (EDM) theory and Sirgy’s (1986) self-congruence theory. To test the model, highly valid responses were collected from 454 U.S. nationwide consumers through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The results indicated that: (1) consumers’ affective response (outward-focused emotion) and cognitive response (moral awareness) both provoked their moral incongruence and brand switching intention, (2) consumers’ cognitive response had a negative and significant impact on their moral disengagement, but moral disengagement had a marginal impact on brand switching intentions, (3) consumers’ affective response has a stronger impact on their moral judgment than cognitive, and their affective response can directly lead to brand switching intention, and lastly, (4) moral incongruence and moral disengagement mediated the effects of moral awareness and outward-focused emotion on brand switching intention. Finally, the research findings contribute to the consumer science literature in the area of consumers' moral decision-making process. For practical contributions, this study encourages companies to conduct practice that follows general consumers' moral beliefs and values to avoid losing their loyal customers. </p>