Does image-congruence enhance the purchase of luxury brands? Early development and international comparisons of a measurement scale for consumer/brand/store image congruence.

The phenomenon of the attribution of human characteristics to objects is of great interest to marketing researchers and practitioners because understanding how consumers perceive products, brands, stores in terms of human attributes is likely to be useful for the elaboration and implementation of marketing actions (d’Astous et Lévesque, 2003). According to Ferrandi et al. (2003), personality would improve brand positioning, differentiation, and communication of the emotional aspects associated with these brands and their consumption. In this research, we will focus on the brand personality but also store personality which can be defined as the set of human personality traits associated with the point of sale of a brand (d'Astous et al. , 2002). In luxury sector, over time, the variable distribution has become more and more strategic. The manufacturers have taken back control of distribution, developing their own stores networks and choosing independent distributors very carefully (Moore and Birtwistle, 2005; Wigley et al 2005; Godey et al. , 2009). This strategic movement has given to the store - image a major importance. Much research is available on self- image congruence which refers to the match between consumers’ self- concept and the user image or personality of a given product, brand, store.... (Kressmann et al. , 2006). We will try to measure the impact of an image congruence between consumer/brand/store on attachment towards a luxury brand. Previous research has demonstrated the interest for luxury brands to create a strong and lasting emotional bond with consumers. To check the veracity of this link and whether it was shared across all the countries of our sample, we used the concept of brand attachment (Lacoeuilhe, 2000). This paper presents the first phase of develo pment of our measurement scale of image congruence in the luxury sector. It relies on an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis based on four personality scales (Aaker, 1997; Heine, 2009; d'Astous and Levesque,McCrae and Costa, 1995, 2005) in four countries of our research group (Italy, France, Germany and India).