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How does a luxury brand’s personality affect our loyalty to the brand? And how do our perceptions of who else is buying a luxury brand impact on our purchasing decisions?

The UWA Business School’s Associate Professor Fang Liu and her co-authors answered these questions and more in a European Journal of Marketing article that was recently awarded a “Citation of Excellence” by Emerald Group Publishing.

Titled ‘ Self-congruity, brand attitude, and brand loyalty: A study on luxury brands ,’ the article presented an empirical study examining Australian consumers’ attitudes to luxury brands Chanel and Calvin Klein.

Perhaps surprisingly, the study found that the relationship between a luxury brand’s personality – for example, outgoing or aggressive traits – and a consumer’s personality had little impact upon the consumer’s purchasing decision.

However, our perceptions of the ‘typical user’ of a luxury brand have a significant impact on how we feel towards the brand. If we think a ‘typical user’ has a similar age, gender, or culture to us, we are more likely to then purchase this brand ourselves.

Further, our perceptions of the ‘typical use’ of a brand – for example, whether a Chanel handbag is used at formal functions or during everyday life – impacts on our brand attitudes. If consumers believed that their intended use of a brand matched the ways in which the brand depicted its typical usage, they became more likely to purchase that brand.

Associate Professor Liu believes that as we learn more about our perceptions of luxury brands, there is an opportunity for marketers to put greater emphasis on ‘typical user’ and ‘typical usage’ imagery in advertising and other communication with consumers.

‘Self-congruity, brand attitude, and brand loyalty: A study on luxury brands’ was published in the European Journal of Marketing, an elite marketing journal, in 2012.

The paper was recently recognised as ‘one of the most highly cited and highly influential papers published in 2012 relating to the areas of Business Management, Finance, Accounting, Economics and Marketing.’

Media references

Karen Della Torre (UWA Business School)                                               (+61 8) 6488 8538
Verity Chia (UWA Business School)                                                         (+61 8) 6488 1346