Consumers' Selves and Marketing

Consumers' self-concept plays a key role in consumer behavior. Against this background, this doctoral thesis is dedicated to the examination of important aspects related to consumers' self. In three papers, Daniela Herzog studies consumers' self in the context of marketing from three different perspectives. In Paper 1, she provides a better understanding of the two types of consumers' self-concepts (actual and ideal self) and how they are construed. In Paper 2, she examines how an activated ideal self (i.e., ideal self-congruence) and its different facets (e.g., related to status or friendship) influence the perceptions of brands and consumers' emotions simultaneously. Finally, in Paper 3, she studies how advertising that promotes the beauty of normality and challenges unrealistic beauty ideals impacts females' self-discrepancy (difference between the actual and ideal self), emotions, and brand perceptions. Conclusively, this dissertation highlights consumers' self as a central, multifaceted, and complex phenomenon. The three papers improve our understanding of consumers' actual and ideal self and provide insights into how to target them. The dissertation also shows that both aspirational branding (communicating with ideals) and therapeutic advertising (promoting the beauty of normality and challenging unrealistic and unattainable beauty ideals) can have positive and negative effects on a consumer simultaneously (a dual effect). These findings imply that managers and researchers need to be aware of such potential dual effects. In sum, this dissertation generates implications for research in the context of consumers' self in marketing and consumer behavior. Furthermore, this dissertation generates important implications for managers on how brands can most effectively target and activate consumers' selves, on how to positon brands which are congruent with consumers' ideals, and on how to implement advertising strategies challenging unrealistic beauty ideals.