Self-brand values congruity and incongruity: Their impacts on self-expansion and consumers’ responses to brands

The results from a large survey (N = 2010) show that the positive effects of the congruity between brand values and consumers’ ongoing value priorities on a variety of consumers’ responses to brands can be generalized to the different value types in Schwartz's framework. More importantly, findings from this survey show that, although brands embody values incongruent with consumers’ ongoing value priorities, they trigger a positive effect on the same consumers’ responses when these values are associated with a cultural ideal. Results were robust and emerged for a variety of product categories and brands. Furthermore, results from a lab experiment demonstrate that, compared to brands that embody consumers’ ongoing value priorities, those that additionally embody non-prioritized values associated with an ideal self induce feelings of self-expansion, which in turn leads to more favorable consumer responses to brands. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings for the branding literature are discussed.