Brand engagement into self-concept and culture: a literature review for a future research agenda

The paper structures the recent literature on brand engagement into self-concept (BESC) and its antecedents (i.e. materialism and status consumption). The research aims to define future research directions on BESC based on consumers’ cultural orientations formulated in Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions. Bibliometric analysis with the visualisation of similarities (VOS) method and content analysis in the form of thematic analysis were used to examine the research landscape and select the main research fronts on BESC, materialism, status consumption, and cultural dimensions. The data were collected from The Web of Knowledge and Scopus and cross-checked with EBSCO. The recognition that consumer culture contributes to the brand marketing drives companies to engage with their consumers focusing on the self-concept. This study advances the theme of the importance of BESC and culture. It proposes future research directions on cultural dimensions and BESC to develop an understanding of the core drivers and the consequences of BESC among consumers. The findings contribute to developing more effective branding and communication strategies across different cultures. The study is limited to three selected databases and Hofstede's cultural dimensions model as a culture metric.