Marketers often attempt to connect their brand with an aspect of consumer social identity such as gender, nationality, university, or ethnicity. For example, a campaign for the aftershave Old Spice attempted to connect its brand with male gender identity through the use of the tagline “Smell like a man, man,” whereas the deodorant Secret linked to female gender identity with the tagline “Strong Like a Woman.” Presumably, such tactics induce target consumers to evaluate the identity-linked brand more favorably. But what happens when that social identity is threatened? How do customers respond then?
For example, a female consumer reads a newspaper article derogating women’s math abilities: Will she be more likely to embrace products that are linked with her feminine identity, such as the deodorant, or shy away from them? Existing research argues for the latter, as the consumer dissociates herself from products linked to this threatened aspect of her identity. But a new study suggests this is not the whole picture.
The study, by Katherine White, Jennifer J. Argo and Jaideep Sengupta, combines the idea of social identity with that of self-construal – the extent to which a person views himself or herself as either separate and independent from others, or interconnected and interdependent with them. Using university undergraduates as the test subjects, they show that the reactions of these two groups under a social identity threat can be quite different.
On the one hand, those with more independent self-construals behave as previous research has suggested and avoid identity-linked products due to a desire to restore individual self-worth. But when those who are highly interdependent are exposed to a threat, their need for belongingness is activated. They behave opposite to the independents – they become even more likely to favor the product in question.
“After reading negative information about their university, students with an independent construal lowered their preferences for products linked to the university identity (e.g., a gift certificate to the university book store),” the authors said. “We find that this effect arises because those who are more independent are particularly concerned with viewing themselves in a positive light. In order to maintain positive self-views, they avoid products that have negative associations (i.e., products linked to the threatened identity).
“Those with interdependent self-construals, in contrast, actually heightened their preference for products linked to the threatened identity. They warded off the threat by activating and reinforcing their connections with important groups, which include not only the threatened identity, but other identities as well. Thus, when they were exposed to negative information about their university, they had greater preference not only for university-linked products (e.g., the university bookstore), but also for products linked to their gender (e.g., gender-targeted magazines).”
The authors said their findings offered marketers a possible avenue for benefiting when an identity-linked product was threatened.
“If marketers are able to activate an interdependent self-construal in the context of their product offerings, consumers may have positive evaluations of the brand linked to an identity even when that social identity is threatened. For target markets that are more independent, our findings suggest that affirming self-relevant values may be the best defence against an identity threat,” they said.