Researchers at the University of Illinois suggests that users of products and services, are more likely to defend a particular brand due to insecurities over one’s self image.
The research points to those who experience brand failure more, are likely to internalise it — reflecting it upon one’s inability to pick a strong allegiance.
(Image via Flickr)
To be published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology in the coming weeks, the research analyses the relationship between brands and consumers, concluding that those who have more personal experience with a particular brand are most likely to be impacted by reflective failure.
Self-brand connections, the measure of those who follow certain brands, either through buying or researching, reflect back on the individual. Those who have high self-brand connections — and those who follow a particular brand until the ends of the earth — find that their self-esteem suffers when brands fail or struggle.
According to the research, those with high self-brand connections tend to ignore or discount negative views about their brands — all in favour of maintaining their own self-esteem.
It seems that at long last, we can now see why Apple fans and Microsoft enthusiasts, in particular, become stereotypically aggressive, verbal and defensive when a negative opinion or news occurs. The research suggests that the news or views negatively impacts that person’s self-worth and image.
What isn’t clear, however, is how one builds up a high self-brand connection to a particular product, brand or company.
It may explain why ‘fanboys’ — the term to describe a person who defends their purchases or allegiances to near-aggressive tendencies — act in the way that they do, but it does not explain how one gets there.
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