Congruency between brand and consumer values and its relation to brand attitude: a study of a well-known food brand on the Russian market

Abstract

Understanding consumer behavior has become one of the priorities of marketing managers. This knowledge is crucial for companies so as to build strong brand-consumer relationships and to develop adequate marketing communication. One way to investigate brand-consumer relationships refers to the concept of congruency/congruity between brand and consumer. In existing research, congruency between consumer and brand has been measured through the lens of self-image, self-concept, brand image and brand per-sonality. The current Master thesis aims to address the concept of congruency between consumer values and values associated with a brand as well as to examine the relations between brand attitude and congruency. The theoretical part of the paper focuses on existing concepts of values and congruency whereas the empirical part of the study aims to measure value congruency of Russian consumers. The first objective of the study is to examine whether there exists congruency between consumer values and values that con-sumers associate with a brand, using the values from the Rokeach Value Survey. The second objective is to explore whether the degree of congruency between the values has a relation to the brand attitude. The study also aims to bring new insight to the topic of value congruency. Given the fact that there is little research dedicated to the measurement of value congruency, the author tested several different ways to measure it. The results of the study show that there exists a certain level of congruency between consumer values and values that consumers associate with the food brand. Given the absence of proven value congruency measurement system, it seems difficult to assess the degree of congruency objectively. The findings of the study have also shown that various measurement techniques applied show different correlations between the congruency and brand attitude. The findings of the study suggest implications for further research of the topic in order to develop a consistent measurement tool of value congruency and to examine its relation with general brand attitude and other variables.