Abstract
Nowadays, consumers go to shops not only for the functional benefits brought by products but also for the psychological utilities such as sensational pleasure, diversities, or self-image expressions to satisfy their mental need. Previous marketing researchers have suggested that when the congruency of self-image and products' image was high, it led to a positive influence on people's preferences toward the product. This study first further proposed that the impacts of congruency of self-image and product image on the purchase intention of products would be varied in different product categories. Additionally, the Internet role-playing games were pervasive and provided fantasies which went beyond people's real lives. The virtual identities might not be the same as consumers' real identities. The second purpose of this research was to analyze whether people consuming virtual products employed different selves to satisfy their mental utility. We conducted a 2 (congruency of self-image: actual self-image/ideal self-image) * 2 (real/virtual product) * 3 (product type: utilitarian/hedonic/symbolic) experimental design. Toothbrushes (utilitarian), KTV singing (hedonic), and rings (symbolic) as the representative real products and detoxified panaceas (utilitarian), e-lovers (hedonic), and knight badges (symbolic) as the representative virtual products were selected by three pretests according to Wood's (1960) definition. The Malhotral's (1981) 15 semantic items were used to measure the respondents' self-images and product images to produce the different scores. Based on the results of 228 valid samples of real products and 201 samples of virtual products, the findings showed that the congruency of self-image had no significant influence on purchase intention of real or virtual utilitarian products. Also, the congruency of actual self-image had greater influence on the purchase intention of virtual hedonic products. The purchase intention of symbolic products was found to be influenced by the congruency of actual self-image and real product image and by the congruency of ideal self-image and virtual product image. In conclusion, when people purchase utilitarian products, they focus more on the product attributes than on the self-congruency. On the other hand, when people buy virtual hedonic products, they may want to release the pressure from the social norm in the real world and purchase a virtual hedonic product which provides more pleasures. Furthermore, consumers' “role-position” or “self-enhancement” motivations are activated when purchasing real or virtual symbolic products, respectively. This study extended the research of self-image to the purchase intention of virtual products compared with real products. Managers may establish product images according to the target consumers' self-images and the product types. A proper product image can enhance the product identification and increased the purchase intention.
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© 2015 Academy of Marketing Science
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Bei, LT., Wang, CP., Lee, CP. (2015). The Effects of Self-Congruency and Product Type on the Purchase Intention of Real Versus Virtual Products. In: Robinson, Jr., L. (eds) Proceedings of the 2009 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference. Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10864-3_77
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10864-3_77
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-10864-3
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