Abstract

Although numerous studies have examined relationships between brands and consumers, how consumers create those connections with brands in their daily lives is not yet well understood. This dissertation consists of two essays that focus on how brands can influence and strengthen their connections with consumers. The first essay examines how brand personality can be associated with consumers’ actual and ideal self to create stronger self-brand connections. Using a series of six studies, the author addresses hypotheses related to the importance of congruence between actual and ideal self and the underlying processes (i.e., self-verification and self-enhancement). Results suggest that consumers communicate diverse parts of their identities through different brand personality traits, and that this matching mechanism stimulates self-brand connections. Different boundary conditions (i.e., identity threat, public vs. private threat) are examined. The second essay investigates the effect of identity conflict and ambiguity on self-brand connections in the context of self-expression. It investigates how brands can serve as coping mechanisms to reduce uncertainty during periods of identity conflict and ambiguity. Across six studies, the author examines how identity conflicts and identity ambiguity can lead to different strategies for consumers in terms of their rebranding strategies and communicating their identities to other consumers. Taken together, the two essays suggest that identity processes have an important effect on how connections between brands and consumers evolve and strengthen over time.