Where does self-brand connection collide?

Self-brand connection is the degree to which a person has taken a brand into their own self-concept and uses it to build, express, or signal who they are. Escalas and Bettman's 2003 You Are What They Eat traced how consumers draw brand meaning from the groups they belong to or aspire to, and Escalas's 2004 Narrative Processing built and validated the scale that measures this overlap between brand and self. As one of several labels for a consumer's tie to a brand, it puts the weight on identity and self-expression, where a sibling label stresses emotional bonding, another stresses a match of images, and another stresses passionate love, all naming much the same relationship.[1][2]

Unit

One consumer's identity overlap with one brand, on a rating scale

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Scored on the self-brand connection scale, a short set of agreement items on how far the brand reflects and expresses the self

Brand attachment is the strength of the emotional bond linking a consumer to a brand, drawn by analogy from the bonds people form with each other. Park, MacInnis, Priester, Eisingerich, and Iacobucci's 2010 Brand Attachment and Brand Attitude Strength defined it through two parts, brand-self connection and brand prominence, and showed it predicts real spending and sacrifice better than a plain attitude rating. Its first part is nearly the self-brand connection scale itself, so this label mostly renames the same identity overlap while adding an emphasis on how readily the brand comes to mind, and it overlaps heavily with the other names for a consumer's tie to a brand.[3]

Unit

One consumer's bond to one brand, scored by connection and prominence

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Rated on brand-self connection and brand prominence items, combined into an attachment score

Self-congruity is the match between the image a consumer holds of a brand or its typical user and the image they hold of themselves, whether their actual self or an ideal one. Sirgy's 1982 Self-Concept in Consumer Behavior reviewed and formalised this construct, arguing that people favour brands whose user image fits their own self-image. Framed as the degree of fit between brand and self, it captures much the same identity overlap that self-brand connection and brand attachment measure, differing mainly in casting the tie as a perceived match of images rather than a felt bond or an act of self-expression.[4]

Unit

One consumer's image fit with one brand, as a congruence score

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Computed from ratings of brand-user image against self-image, or asked directly as a global fit judgment

Brand love names the warm, passionate, and committed feeling some consumers report toward a brand they cherish, borrowing the vocabulary of love between people. Batra, Ahuvia, and Bagozzi's 2012 Brand Love built a higher-order construct whose parts include self-brand integration, passion, and long-term commitment, and the closely related idea of consumer-brand identification frames the same tie as the consumer treating the brand as part of who they are. Its self-integration part is again the identity overlap at the heart of self-brand connection, so brand love largely repackages the same relationship into stronger emotional language rather than marking off a truly distinct thing to measure.[5]

Unit

One consumer's love for one brand, on a multi-part scale

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Rated across parts such as self-brand integration, passion, and commitment, then combined into a love score