CONSISTENCY BETWEEN CONSUMER PERSONALITY AND BRAND PERSONALITY INFLUENCES BRAND ATTACHMENT

We investigated the impact of consistency between consumer personality and brand personality on emotional brand attachment. Participants were 200 undergraduate students at Tsinghua University and we used leading brands in the product category of mobile phone as the survey's stimuli. The results of a structural equation model suggested that consistency in the personality dimensions of sincere, cool, and young had a significant positive impact on the participants' brand attachment compared with consistency in the dimensions of simple, sensitive, reliable, and competent. The results provide strong support for the hypothesis that people feel emotionally attached to brands that match their personality or reflect who they believe they are. We also discuss important theoretical and practical implications of these findings.