Keywords

92.1 Introduction

In a competitive market, understanding of consumer self-concept is the key to find the intrinsic motivation of consumer behavior, and gain a competitive advantage. The effects of self-concept on attitudes, preference, and purchase intentions have been confirmed empirically in various studies involving products/brands (e.g., Wu and Chan 2011; Chang 2010; Yim et al. 2007). The previous studies mostly quote the conceptual model proposed by Sirgy (1982) or the conceptual model proposed by Brewer and Chen (2007). In spite of that, it is necessary for marketers to understand Chinese consumers’ self-concept because of the differences between east culture and west culture. The purpose of this study is to develop a model for Chinese consumers’ self-concept, and empirically investigate its validity based on literature review and in-depth interviews.

92.2 Theoretical Background

92.2.1 Definition and Dimensions of Consumers’ Self-Concept

Despite the fact that there is no precise definition of self-concept in the consumer behavior literature, a basic definition of this term is: “totality of the individual’s thoughts and feelings having reference to himself/herself as an object” (Rosenberg 1979). Considering the importance of consumers’ self-concept in consumer behavior literature, a number of investigators have discussed its dimensions.

As shown in Table 92.1, these researches of consumer self-concept construction have varied from one-dimensional perspective to multidimensional one. Despite the lacking of agreement of consumers’ self-concept, its multidimensionality is the trend.

Table 92.1 The dimensions of consumers’ self-concept
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92.3 Research Model

92.3.1 Proposed Self-Concept Model

To explore Chinese consumers’ self-concept, this study makes an in-depth interviews to 68 Chinese consumers based on the literature. This study divides the dimension “actual self-concept” proposed by Sirgy (1982) into two dimensions: “real self-concept” with natural attributes and “actual self-concept” with social attributes. During in-deep interviews, the study found that some consumers’ behavior should be caused by hunger, cold, sex, and so on. So, “instinct self-concept” is proposed. Based on the above, this study proposes a six-dimension self-concept model (Fig. 92.1).

Fig. 92.1
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Conceptual model for consumer’s self-concept

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  1. 1.

    Instinct self: According to Freud, the personality is composed of three parts: Id, ego, and superego. Among them, the Id refers to the original I, including basic desires, impulses and vitality. To be a consumer, there are many needs caused by instinctive physiological conditions at any time. For example, starvation, thirst, discomfort, curious and so on. Instinct self-concept is dominated by consumers’ instinct behavior. Faced with special stimulus, consumers will act with a fixed mode.

  2. 2.

    Real self and actual self: Sirgy (1982) defined actual self as how individuals think about themselves, and though it can be seen as one of the self-concept’ dimensions. However, he did not distinguish this term from the perceptive of human nature. In this paper, we define real self-concept as how individual considers himself/herself from the natural attribute, including his own personality, values, and the pursuit of ability. Meanwhile, we define actual self-concept as how individual considers himself/herself from the social attribute, including his/her social role, social responsibility awareness and so on. Actual self-concept refers to people linked with others.

  3. 3.

    Ideal self: According to George and Jae, an individual is cognizant of not only what she/he is, but also what she/he wishes to be (George and Jae 1991). In general, ideal self-concept is the reference point with which actual self is compared. If there is a gap between them, an individual strives to achieve the ideal state. In this respect, ideal self is a motive force driving an individual upward. Ideal self-concept refers to how a person would like to perceive himself/herself.

  4. 4.

    Social self: From the sociological perspective, social risk is defined as the extent to which consumers think that other people judge them on the basis of the product or a brand they use (Jacoby and Kaplan 1972). Consumers live in a society associated with others, and other people’s opinions would influence their judgments more or less. Lee (1990) suggests that social risk is one of the multiple dimensions of perceived risk which consumers subjectively have in product purchase and/or consumption situation. Social self-concept refers to how a person thinks about others’ opinions on him/her.

  5. 5.

    Ideal social self: Ideal social self-concept is the ideal state of social self-concept. If there is a gap between them, an individual would strive to achieve the social self’s ideal state. Sirgy (1982) regards Ideal social self-concept as one of the self-concept’ dimensions and defines it as how a person would like others to consider him/her.

92.4 Research Method

92.4.1 Measures

To ensure the content validity of the scales, all items selected for each construct in this study were adapted from the extant literature. Each construct was measured using multiple items, fully anchored on the basis of a seven-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”.

92.4.2 Data Collection and Sample Characteristics

This study surveyed customers by street survey manner, E-mail, and QQ online questionnaires in a random sample. Total of 650 questionnaires were sent out, and 45 invalid questionnaires were removed, 503 questionnaires eventually were used in the empirical analysis, which gives an effective response rate of 84.3 %.

92.5 Results

92.5.1 Measurement Assessment

For verifying the validity of the questionnaire items, principal component analysis with varimax rotation was used to draw out 6 factors. The results show, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test value (0.905 > 0.5) indicates that a sample is sufficient, Bartlett’s sphericity validation value (p = 0.00; <0.05) indicates correlation matrix of all variables were statistically significant. So factor analysis model is appropriate. As shown in Table 92.2, one item of Instinct self-concept (x15) appeared cross loading and it was removed for verifying the single dimension of the items. The remaining items are loading to a single factor, and loading benchmark is over 0.5, indicating good discriminant validity and convergent validity. Moreover, the internal consistency of the rest of the variables was verified with Cranach’s alpha values by this study. The results are indicated that the measurement of the concept of the study asked the items have higher internal consistency. A confirmatory factor analysis is shown in Table 92.3, 3 items(x25, x45, and x54) were removed because modified index is not fit for setting strict benchmarks in 10. The other items show significant convergent validity, discriminant validity, and superior model fit degree. Finally, this study use AMOS 7.0 to test the overall measurement model of Self-concept, whose modified index set strict benchmarks in 10 (shown in Table 92.4).

Table 92.2 Analysis results: principal component and reliability
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Table 92.3 Results of CFA
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Table 92.4 Evaluation results: overall measure model
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92.5.2 Test of the Structural Model

As shown in Fig. 92.2, the conceptual model in statistics is reasonable.

Fig. 92.2
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Result of SEM

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92.6 Conclusions and Discussion

Firstly, consumers’ self-concept includes natural attribute and social attribute, and contains six dimensions: instinct self-concept, real self-concept, ideal self-concept, actual self-concept, social self-concept, and ideal social self-concept. Secondly, from the perspective of relative contribution of each dimension, social self-concept and ideal-social self-concept are the largest. Sirgy (1982) pointed out that actual self consistency and ideal self consistency received the most support in the previous study. It shows that Chinese consumers are more likely to be affected by the group, and they pay more attention to others’ view and social effect than the western consumers do.

The model of Chinese consumers’ self-concept proposed in this study is an improvement of the one proposed by Sirgy (1982). It is important for marketers to pay attention to consumers’ demand of social attribute to make effective marketing strategies in Chinese market.