European Journal of Marketing 32,11/12 1110

Received December 1993 Revised April 1997 Revised November 1997

The self-concept and image congruence hypothesis

An empirical evaluation in the motor vehicle market
Adam P. Heath
ASB Bank, Auckland, New Zealand and

Don Scott
Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia
Introduction Onkvisit and Shaw (1987) suggested that self-concept is significant and relevant to the study of consumer behaviour as many purchases made by consumers are directly influenced by the image individuals have of themselves. This view has been reinforced by a number of other researchers (for example Feinberg et al., 1992; Schwer and Daneshvary, 1995; Sirgy and Ericksen, 1992). From a marketing perspective, the study of self-concept is of particular relevance because the image that individuals associate with themselves frequently dictates specific purchase behaviour patterns. For example, consumers may buy a product because, among other factors, they feel that the product enhances their own self-image. Similarly, consumers may decide not to buy a product or not to shop at a particular store if they feel that these actions are not consistent with their own perceptions of themselves (Britt, 1960). This process of consumers purchasing products/brands that they believe possess symbolic images similar and/or complementary to the image they hold of themselves is referred to as image congruity. Sirgy (1982, 1986) outlined the importance of self-concept theory to consumer behaviour research by explaining that consumers who perceive the product image to be consistent with their actual self-concept are likely to feel motivated to purchase and consume that product. This occurs because the greater the congruity of selfconcept with a particular product, the greater the likelihood that the product will satisfy a consumer. This study examined self-concept and image congruence theory under actual market conditions and in relation to physically similar products with different brand images. The New Zealand motor vehicle market was chosen as the market sector to be used, because it provided an opportunity for such a study to be carried out.

European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 32 No. 11/12, 1998, pp. 1110-1123, MCB University Press, 0309-0566

Self-concept and purchasing behaviour The self-concept In the consumer behaviour literature self-concept has generally been identified and image as a multidimensional concept comprising five components: the ideal self, the hypothesis apparent self, the social self, the perceived self, and the actual self (Burns, 1979; Markin, 1979; Rosenberg, 1979; Sirgy, 1981, 1982, 1986). Markin (1979) describes these multiple components of self as follows ...the perceived self is how one 1111 sees oneself; the ideal self is the model person which one aspires to be; the social self is how a person thinks others perceive them; and the apparent self is how people actually view the individual. The actual self is a composite of all these concepts. This view was also adopted by other researchers in the self-concept area (Burns, 1979; Malhotra, 1988; Rosenberg, 1979; Sirgy, 1981, 1982, 1986). This multidimensional self-concept may explain why and/or how consumers are motivated to interact with reference groups, salespeople, and competing brands. An understanding of the self-concepts influence on behaviour may enable marketers to develop effective methods of appealing to various target markets by targeting different self-concepts. Levy (1959) suggested that consumers are not functionally oriented and that their behaviour is significantly affected by the symbols which identify goods in the marketplace. This argument suggests that consumers may purchase for reasons other than functionality. This concept alerted academics studying consumer behaviour to the idea that consumers may purchase goods in order to develop a particular self-image (self-concept). Following the ideas of Levy, a number of self-concept models were formulated to describe, explain, and predict the precise role of consumers self-concepts in consumer purchasing behaviour. Grubb and Grathwohl (1967) used the theory of individual self enhancement (Rogers, 1951) as a basis for hypothesising that self-concept is of value to the individual, and that an individuals behaviour will therefore be directed toward the protection and enhancement of their self-concept. The purchase, display, and use of goods will communicate a symbolic meaning to an individual whose consuming behaviour will be directed toward enhancing their self-concept through the consumption of symbolic goods. What they suggested was that the individuals sense of identity or sense of self (self-concept) which was an integral part of their psychological make-up, would be maintained and developed through the purchase of symbolic goods. Thus products and brands that were purchased by consumers would be used by those individuals to portray a particular image that represented how they wished to appear to both themselves and to others. The role of self-concept has been investigated in a number of areas, such as product perception (French and Glaschner, 1971; Hamm and Cundiff, 1969), implicit behaviour patterns (Greeno et al., 1973), specific behaviour (Guttman, 1973), advertising perception (Debevec et al., 1987; Domzal and Kernan, 1993; Markus, 1977), advertising effectiveness (Hong and Zinkhan, 1995) and symbolic interactionism (Leigh and Gable, 1992). Much of self-concept research has been focused on explaining brand/product preference, purchase intention or

European Journal of Marketing 32,11/12 1112

usage in terms of congruency of the products or brands with the consumers self-concept. This notion of congruency related to the ideas generated in a study by Tucker (1957) in which he argued that consumers personalities could be defined through product use. According to this perspective, products, suppliers, and services are assumed to have an image determined not only by the physical characteristics of the object alone, but by a host of other factors such as packaging, advertising, and price (Sirgy, 1982). These images are also formed by other associations, such as stereotypes of the generalised or typical user (Britt, 1960; Grubb and Grathwohl, 1967; Levy, 1959). Therefore, the meanings that products hold for consumers are a function of all the factors listed above and the product meanings determine to what degree the product is viewed as being congruent with the self-concepts of consumers. Empirical support for the hypothesis that consumers purchase goods that are congruent with their self-concept has been provided by several studies (Birdwell, 1964; Grubb, 1965; Grubb and Stern, 1971; Ross, 1971). These researchers found that self-concepts tended to be similar among owners of the same product brand, but differed across owners of the same product with different brands. Such empirically proven behaviour is of interest to both marketing academics and practitioners as it suggests that a purchase is not likely to take place when there is a lack of congruency between product image and self-concept (Onkvisit and Shaw, 1987). Any product information that is inconsistent with the consumers self-concept is unlikely to gain their attention, acceptance, and retention. Where incongruence exists and a purchase does take place, consumers are unlikely to repeat such a purchase (Onkvisit and Shaw, 1987).This principle, which is referred to as image congruence, forms one of the major issues investigated in this paper. Arising from this research literature describing the relationship between self-concept and image congruence, the following null hypotheses can be formulated and tested: Ho(1): There is no difference between the mean self-concept scores of owners of different brands of physically similar products. Ho(2): There is no difference between the mean scores for the self-concept that owners attribute to themselves when compared to the mean scores for the self-concept that they attribute to owners of a competing brand. Ho(3): Users of a specific brand perceive the score for the self-concept of a user of that brand as not being significantly different from the selfconcept score for a user of a competing brand. Ho(4): There is no difference between the mean scores for the self-concept that owners attribute to themselves when compared to the mean scores for the self-concept that they attribute to other owners of the same brand. These hypotheses are evaluated empirically in this paper.

Research methodology The self-concept In conducting this research, it was necessary to find physically equivalent and image products with different brand names. This situation was found to pertain in hypothesis the smaller motor vehicle market in New Zealand where the Mazda 323 and the Ford Laser were the same motor vehicles identical in design, styling and mechanical characteristics but offered to the customers under different brand 1113 names by different motor vehicle suppliers. The population used for the research consisted of all private motor vehicle owners who had purchased either a Mazda 323 or a Ford Laser in the previous year. The names of the owners were obtained from the customer databases of the New Zealand Ford and Mazda Motor Companies. A random sample of 600 respondents for each model type was selected, and was contacted by mail. The research instruments were personally addressed to each owner. Of the total of 1,200 research instruments that were mailed out over a two week period, 17 (1.41 percent) were returned due to incorrect addressing or advice that the owner was deceased or had changed address. In total, 361 responses (30.1 percent) were received from Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners. There was a reasonable balance of responses from the owners of the different types of motor vehicles, with 189 responses from Mazda 323 owners and 172 responses from Ford Laser owners. All responses were used for the purposes of data analysis. The majority of the total sample of respondents comprised older people (69.9 percent were aged over 50 years) and the vehicle sub-sample characteristics for both Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners were the same as the overall sample. The research instrument included 13 trait and 11 statement-based questions, all of which were scored on scales of one to five. Respondents were asked to indicate the level of applicability of the traits and statements to themselves, to other owners of the same brand, and to owners of the competing brand. Respondent demographic information was also recorded. The instrument not only followed the traditional method of examining personality traits, as used by Grubb and Hupp (1968) but also included value statements. This approach was adopted because, as Lee (1990) demonstrated, what is valued by a person is another dimension of their self-concept and will vary with different situations. For example, a person may not classify themselves as a highly sporty oriented person but they may value products that have a sporty image. The fact that they value such sporty products suggests that they wish to project a sporty self-image both to themselves and to others around them. The 13 trait and 11 value statements which were used were not generated from a pre-published, generalised list of adjectives as had been the case in previous self-concept research (Grubb and Hupp, 1968). Instead, the approach recommended by Sirgy (1982) was adopted. This required that all the words used to create the statements were totally product specific so as to ensure high levels of content validity. The adjectives for the statements were generated by a group of experts for each motor vehicle model. These experts were the

European Journal of Marketing 32,11/12 1114

marketing manager and product manager of the particular motor vehicle manufacturing firm and the account executive for the advertising agency used by the motor vehicle manufacturer to promote the particular motor vehicle model. The manufacturers continuously engage in marketing research to identify which aspects of motor vehicles are of interest to purchasers. The use of these managers, who were aware of the ongoing results of this research, thus drew on the knowledge obtained from ongoing annual customer surveys. Using experts to identify key aspects was considered to be a far better method than using a focus group approach. In total, 20 adjectives that described the personality traits of the owners of each model were established. These adjectives were then scrutinised by a group of marketing research experts (senior university marketing academics) to further assess their ability to measure self-concept accurately and to ensure that items had not been included which could have reflected the results of market research, but might not have been solely self-concept related. Once this process had been completed, the adjectives were incorporated into adjectival pre-test scales that were submitted to five members of staff from the marketing departments at both Ford and Mazda. Respondents were asked to indicate the degree to which they thought the adjectival statements described the personalities of both Ford Laser and Mazda 323 owners. The anchor points for the semantic differential scales ranged from 1 = not applicable to 5 = very applicable. A list of the final traits and statements used in the semantic differential scales for each brand is contained in Appendix 1. One way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the mean values produced by the different respondent groups in this pre-test. Only those traits/statements that received statistically significantly different mean scores between the Ford and Mazda ratings were used to create the final semantic differential scale. This was done to ensure that none of the trait/statement questions could be applicable to either of the two brands examined. All tests were conducted at the 95 percent significance level, with Tukey post-hoc tests being used to examine the individual main effect differences. The semantic differential scales were assessed for reliability by calculating Cronbachs coefficient alpha () for each scale. See Table I for values. All of the scales exhibited Cronbach values equal to or greater than 0.8. This level
Cronbachs coefficient alpha for each set of questions Mazda 323 Mazda 323 Ford Laser Ford Laser trait value trait value statements statements statements statements Mazda 323 owners Ford Laser owners 0.93 0.95 0.93 0.94 0.81 0.85 0.80 0.87

Table I. Reliability estimates using Cronbachs alpha ()

of reliability can be considered to be satisfactory for basic research (Nunnally The self-concept and Bernstein, 1994, p. 265). The content validity of the set of scale components and image had been established by means of the procedures used to establish the original hypothesis trait and value statements and the series of evaluations and pre-tests that were carried out. Analysis Table II shows the results of a series of one way repeated measure ANOVA analyses that were used to detect if there were significant differences between the average self-concept trait and value scores of Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners in either the case of the self-concept trait scales and the value related aspects of self-concept. The results reported in Table II supported hypothesis Ho(1) namely that irrespective of the scale used, there was no significant difference in self-concept scores of owners of different brands of physically similar products. Hypothesis Ho(2) was examined by comparing the mean values of owners scores for their evaluations of their own self-concepts with the mean values of the scores for the self-concepts that they attributed to the owners of the competing brand. Again, this analysis was carried out for both the self-concept trait scale and the value related aspects of self-concepts. Table III reports the results of the repeated measures one way ANOVA analyses used to investigate this relationship and reflects results that differed between the two owner groups. Irrespective of the scale used, Ford Laser owners recorded significant differences between themselves and those that owned the competing brand. The scores for both self-concepts and for items valued in a motor vehicle were significantly different and thus hypothesis Ho(2) was rejected. This result was consistent with the majority of self-concept and image congruence theory and research.

1115

Concept measured Difference between self-concepts of Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners Difference between self-concepts of Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners Difference between what is valued in a car by Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners Difference between what is valued in a car by Mazda 323 Ford Laser owners Notes: MTS = Mazda 323 trait scale FLTS = Ford Laser trait scale MVSS = Mazda 323 value statement scale FLVSS = Ford Laser value statement scale

Scale

F-value

Pr > F

MTS FLTS MVSS FLVSS

0.01 0.54 0.03 1.09

0.9189 0.4649 0.8609 0.2982

Table II. Owners perceptions of self-concepts

European Journal of Marketing 32,11/12 1116

Concept measured Difference between the self-concept of Mazda 323 owners and the self-concept that they attribute to Ford Laser owners Difference between the self-concept of Mazda 323 owners and the self-concept that they attribute to Ford Laser owners Difference between what Mazda 323 owners value in a car and what they believe that Ford Laser owners vlaue in a car Difference between what Mazda 323 owners value in a car and what they believe that Ford Laser owners value in a car Difference between the self-concept of Ford Laser owners and the self-concept that they attribute to Mazda 323 owners Difference between the self-concept of Ford Laser owners and the self-concept that they attribute to Mazda 323 owners Difference between what Ford Laser owners value in a car and what they believe that Mazda 323 owners value in a car Difference between what Ford Laser owners value in a car and what they believe that Mazda 323 owners value in a car Notes: MTS = Mazda 323 trait scale FLTS = Ford Laser trait scale MVSS = Mazda 323 value statement scale FLVSS = Ford Laser value statement scale

Respondent

Scale

F-value

Pr > F

Mazda 323 owners

MTS

1.39

0.24

Mazda 323 owners

FLTS

30.42

0.00

Mazda 323 owners

MVSS

1.88

0.17

Mazda 323 owners

FLVSS

36.02

0.00

Ford Laser owners

MTS

28.49

0.00

Ford Laser owners

FLTS

100.76

0.00

Ford Laser owners

MVSS

57.47

0.00

Table III. Owners self-concept of themselves compared with the self-concepts that they attribute to owners of the competing brand

Ford Laser owners

FLVSS

78.20

0.00

In the case of Mazda owners, results on only two of the scales (the Ford Laser trait scale and the Ford Laser value scale) were consistent with the majority of selfconcept and image congruence theory and research. Contrary to the theory, the responses of Mazda owners to the Mazda trait and Mazda value scale supported the hypothesis that there was no difference between their self-concepts and the self-concepts they attributed to owners of the competitive brand. Thus rejection of the hypothesis was both respondent category and scale type dependent. Hypothesis Ho(3) was that consumers of a specific brand would not perceive the self-concept of a user of their brand (i.e. their stereotype of those users self-

concepts) as being significantly different from the self-concept of a user of a The self-concept competing brand (i.e. their stereotype of the self-concept of a competing brand and image user). hypothesis Table IV indicates that Mazda 323 owners differed significantly in respect of the scores for the self-concept they attributed to other Mazda 323 owners and the scores for the self-concept that they attributed to Ford Laser owners. The 1117 same pattern was observed in the scores of Ford Laser respondents. This result rejects hypothesis Ho(3). Table IV indicates that the same relationship was also prevalent in the scores on the value statement scales. The results thus demonstrated that Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners were perceived to be significantly different; both in terms of their self-concepts, and in terms of the value related aspect of their self-concept. Hypothesis Ho(4) was that scores of brand owner perceptions of their own self-concept would not be significantly different from the self-concept scores that they attributed to other owners of the same brand. Table V reports the results of the one way repeated measures ANOVAs used to investigate this concept.
Concept measured Difference between the self-concepts attributed to Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners Difference between the self-concepts attributed to Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners Difference between the self-concepts attributed to Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners Difference between the self-concepts attributed to Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners Difference between what Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners value in a car Difference between what Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners value in a car Difference between what Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners value in a car Difference between what Mazda 323 and Ford Laser owners value in a car Notes: MTS = Mazda 323 trait scale FLTS = Ford Laser trait scale MVSS = Mazda 323 value statement scale FLVSS = Ford Laser value statement scale Respondent Scale F-value Pr > F

Mazda 323 owners

MTS

79.64

0.00

Mazda 323 owners

FLTS

5.86

0.00

Ford Laser owners

MTS

98.50

0.00

Ford Laser owners Mazda 323 owners Mazda 323 owners Ford Laser owners Ford Laser owners

FLTS MVSS FLVSS MVSS FLVSS

92.97 93.40 23.68 71.05 47.43

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Table IV. Comparison of self-concepts for other owners of the respondents brand and the self-concept that they attribute to owners of the competing brand

European Journal of Marketing 32,11/12 1118

Concept measured Difference between the self-concept of Mazda 323 owners and the self-concept that they attribute to other Mazda 323 owners Difference between the self-concept of Mazda 323 owners and the self-concept that they attribute to other Mazda 323 owners Difference between what Mazda 323 owners value in a car and what they believe that other Mazda 323 owners value in a car Difference between what Mazda 323 owners value in a car and what they believe that other Mazda 323 owners value in a car Difference between the self-concept of Ford Laser owners and the self-concept that they attribute to other Ford Laser owners Difference between the self-concept of Ford Laser owners and the self-concept that they attribute to other Ford Laser owners Difference between what Ford Laser owners value in a car and what they believe that other Ford laser owners value in a car Difference between what Ford Laser owners value in a car and what they believe that other Ford laser owners value in a car Notes: MTS = Mazda 323 trait scale FLTS = Ford Laser trait scale MVSS = Mazda 323 value statement scale FLVSS = Ford Laser value statement scale

Respondent

Scale

F-value

Pr > F

Mazda 323 owners

MTS

64.35

0.00

Mazda 323 owners

FLTS

0.00

0.95

Mazda 323 owners

MVSS

37.38

0.00

Mazda 323 owners

FLVSS

2.52

0.11

Ford Laser owners

MTS

12.10

0.00

Ford Laser owners

FLTS

1.44

0.23

Ford Laser owners

MVSS

0.00

0.97

Table V. Owners self-concept of themselves compared with the self-concepts that they attribute to owners of the same brand

Ford Laser owners

FLVSS

5.47

0.02

The Ford Laser trait scale produced results that supported this hypothesis for both owner groups. The mean values of the scores did not differ significantly in respect of the self-concepts of the respondents and the self-concepts that they attributed to other owners of the same brand of motor vehicle. However, mean scores for the Mazda 323 trait scale for both owner groups rejected Ho(4). They identified a significant difference between the mean scores

for the self-concepts of the respondents and the scores for the self-concepts that The self-concept they attributed to owners of the same brand of motor vehicle. and image In the case of both the Mazda and Ford Laser value scales, the response hypothesis patterns were not consistent across the two owner groups. These results therefore provided an ambiguous test of hypothesis Ho(4). Possible explanations for this result are presented below.

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Discussion This paper evaluated self-concept and image congruence theory under actual market conditions in the motor vehicle market. Two potential sources of bias should be noted when considering the research findings. The first is that the sample was skewed towards older people. However, this was representative of the new small car buyer market (see Appendix 2). The second is that, even though the instrument exhibited high reliability and content validity, some respondents found it difficult to assess the applicability of the trait and value statements to other owners. The instrument asked for peoples perceptions of themselves and other owners. Respondents had no difficulty in indicating the applicability of the various statements to themselves but some did have difficulty when they attempted to indicate the degree to which they thought the statements applied to other owners. These respondents stated that the difficulty arose because they did not actually know any of these other owners and therefore were not certain of the applicability of the statements to them. Nevertheless, the research results provided interesting information. One of the major implications of this research for the motor industry is that no support was found for the idea that consumers of different brands of physically similar motor vehicles would perceive themselves to have significantly different selfconcepts (see Table II). This finding contradicted the underlying principles associated with image congruence theory. Possible reasons for this result are first, that similar motor vehicles were examined and second, that actual owners of these motor vehicles were questioned in this research. Previous research tended to focus on non-substitutable products and employed student samples in the investigation of the self-concept (Grubb and Hupp, 1968; Grubb and Stern, 1971). Such limitations reduced the generalisability of previous results. This paper found that the theory of self-concept and its relationship with product image congruity is not suited to products that are similar in terms of physical characteristics and thus similar in their symbolic imagery. Another implication of the results is that they illustrate the notion that consumers of a specific brand of motor vehicle will have different perceptions about the self-concept characteristics they attribute to other owners of the brand compared with the self-concept characteristics they attribute to those that own a competing brand (Table IV). In respect of the ambiguous result obtained in the case of hypothesis Ho(4) it should be noted that the results may have been influenced somewhat by the age distribution of the respondents. Owing to the skewness of the respondents age distribution towards the older age brackets, those trait and value

European Journal of Marketing 32,11/12 1120

statement items that were associated with traditional values may have been rated by respondents as being highly applicable to themselves. Hence, instead of obtaining the predicted effect whereby respondents rate themselves highly on their brands scale and lowly on the competing brands scale, both respondent groups may have rated themselves highly on one scale (the one with the older orientated statements in this case the Ford Laser trait and value statement scales). The high percentage of older people represented in the population of owners of the two brands of motor vehicles may therefore have implications for the type of promotional strategy that should be employed by manufacturers of motor vehicles being sold to a customer segment such as that investigated in this research. The results also suggest that while motor vehicle marketers can be sure that the market will perceive competing models of motor vehicles as having different self-concept stereotypes, this does not necessarily mean that individual owners of these models will aspire to these stereotypes or that owners of competing models will not aspire to the values expressed through these stereotypes. For some population segments self-concept aspects associated with matters other than the product brand may have a greater level of importance. This suggests that advertisers should take care to link any brand-associated self-concept imagery with the most important existing selfconcept aspects of the likely customer segment and establish exactly how their target audience perceive themselves both as individuals and with respect to the owner stereotypes of competitive motor vehicle brands. If a marketers product is used by consumers to project an image both to themselves and to those around them it is important that the symbolic meaning of the product image be carefully developed so that it is positioned correctly in terms of competing products and their consumers. Summary While the limitations of this research should be noted, the research results question the generalisability of self-concept and image congruence theory and do not support the idea that owners of competing brands will always have significantly different self-concepts. When products are physically similar this effect would seem not to apply. This finding differs from the underlying theory behind the image congruence hypothesis and the findings of previous selfconcept research (Grubb and Hupp, 1968; Grubb and Stern, 1971; Ross, 1971). By utilising two vehicle types that were identical in every respect except styling, this research adopted a method of study that had not previously been employed in traditional self-concept research. Past studies tended to investigate products that were different both in terms of their physical characteristics as well as their symbolic imagery. The effect of physical product differences has not been studied to any great degree, and the results of this research suggest that self-concept and image congruence do not occur when product characteristics are highly similar.

Additional research is required to further establish the exact boundaries of The self-concept the applicability of the theory of self-concept and image congruence to product and image market segments, potential customer identities and brands. hypothesis
References Birdwell, E.A. (1964), Influence of image congruence on consumer choice, in Smith, L.G. (Ed.), Reflections on Progress in Marketing, American Marketing Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 290-303. Britt, S.H. (1960), Consumer Behaviour and the Behavioural Sciences: Theories and Applications, John Wiley, New York, NY. Burn, R.B. (1979), The Self-Concept in Theory, Measurement, Development, and Behaviour, Longman, London. Debevec, K., Spotts, H.E. and Kernan, J.B. (1987), The self-referencing effect in persuasion: implications for marketing strategy, in Wallendorf, M. and Anderson, P.F. (Eds), Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 14, Association for Consumer Research, Provo, UT, pp. 417-20. Domzal, T.J. and Kernan, J. B.(1993), Mirror, mirror: some postmodern reflections on global advertising, Journal of Advertising, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 1-20. Feinberg, R.A., Mataro, L. and Burroughs, W.J. (1992), Clothing and social identity, Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, Vol. 11, pp. 18-23. French, W. and Glaschner, A.B. (1971), Levels of actualisation as matched against life style evaluation of products, Proceedings American Marketing Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 35862. Greeno, D.W., Sommers, M.S. and Kernan, J.B. (1973), Personality and implicit behaviour patterns, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 10, pp. 63-9. Grubb, E.L. (1965), Consumer perception of self concept and its relation to brand choice of selected product types, in Bennett, P.D. (Ed.), Marketing and Economic Development, American Marketing Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 419-22. Grubb, E.L. and Grathwohl, H.L. (1967), Consumer self-concept, symbolism, and market behaviour: a theoretical approach, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 31, October, pp. 22-7. Grubb, E.L. and Hupp, G. (1968), Perceptions of self, generalised stereotypes, and brand selection, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 5, February, pp. 58-63. Grubb, E.L. and Stern, B.L. (1971), Self-concept and significant others, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 8, August, pp. 382-5. Guttman, J. (1973), Self-concepts and television viewing among women, Public Opinion Quarterly, Fall, pp. 388-97. Hamm, B.C. and Cundiff, W.E. (1969), Self actualisation and product perception, Journal of Market Research, Vol. 6, pp. 470-2. Hong, J.W. and Zinkhan, G.M. (1995), Self-concept and advertising effectiveness: the influence of congruency, conspicuousness, and response mode, Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 53-77. Lee, D.H. (1990), Symbolic interactionism: some implications for consumer self-concept and product symbolism research, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 17, pp. 386-92. Leigh, J.H. and Gabel, T.G. (1992), Symbolic interactionism: its effects on consumer behavior and implications for marketing strategy, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 5-16. Levy, S.J. (1959), Symbols for sales, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 117-24.

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Malhotra, N.K. (1988), Self concept and product choice: an integrated perspective, Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 9, pp. 1-28. Markin, R.J. (1979), Marketing, John Wiley, New York, NY. Markus, H. (1977), Self-schemata and processing information about the self , Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 35, February, pp. 63-78. New Car Buyer Survey (1991/1992), MRL Research Group, October/September. Nunnally, J.C. and Bernstein, I.H. (1994), Psychometric Theory, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Onkvisit, S. and Shaw, J. (1987), Self-concept and image congruence: some research and managerial implication, The Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 4 No. 1. Rogers, C. (1951), Client-Centred Therapy: Its Current Practices, Implications and Theory, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA. Rosenberg, M. (1979), Conceiving the Self, Basic Books, New York, NY. Ross, I. (1971), Self-concept and brand preference, Journal of Business of the University of Chicago, Vol. 44, pp. 38-50. Schwer, R.K. and Daneshvary, R. (1995), Symbolic product attributes and emulatory consumption: the case of rodeo fan attendance and the wearing of western clothing, Journal of Applied Business Research, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 74-81. Sirgy, J.M. (1981), Testing a self-concept model using a tangible product, in Proceedings of the American Psychological Association Consumer Psychology Division, Vol. 89, p. 17. Sirgy, J.M. (1982), Self-concept in consumer behaviour: a critical review, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 9, December, pp. 287-300. Sirgy, J.M. (1986), Self-Congruity, Praeger, New York, NY. Sirgy, J.M. and Ericksen, M.K. (1992), Employed females clothing preference, self-image congruence, and career anchorage, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 22, pp. 408-22. Tucker, W.T. (1957), Foundations for a Theory of Consumer Behaviour, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, NY. Appendix 1 Personality traits used in semantic differential trait scales Mazda 323 trait scale (MTS) - fun loving - young - innovative - upmarket-daring - emotive - trendy - sophisticated - fashionable Ford Laser trait scale (FLTS) - dependable - economically minded - family orientated - traditional

Value statements used in semantic differential value scales Mazda 323 value statement scale (MVSS) Ford Laser value statement scale (FLVSS) - value a cars sporty image - value classically designed cars - value a cars stylish image - value a car that is roomy - value excitement - value a car that is value for money - value cars that are stunning - value difference in a car - value cars that are innovative - value cars that are trendy - value cars with modern styling

Appendix 2 Model of small car Mazda 323 (percent in age group) 11 8 7 8 11 6 11 8 30

Age group under 30 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65 and over

Ford Laser (percent in age group) 6 6 6 11 5 12 5 15 33

Total market (percent in age group) 8 6 5 8 8 8 9 14 32

The self-concept and image hypothesis 1123

Source: Adapted from New Car Buyer Survey (1991/1992)

Table AI. Age distribution within the New Zealand new small car buyer market