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.

<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>