Self-Brand Congruity and Brand Communication

Brand communication through advertising plays an important role in developing strong brands in emerging markets, especially in India. This chapter investigates how ethnocentrism moderates the effects of advertising adaptation levels (globalization, glocalization, and localization) on Indian consumers’ ad evaluation and self-brand congruity. It uses self-brand congruity to explain the psychological reasons behind the Indian consumers’ preferential patterns of the levels of advertising adaptation. A 2 (local celebrity, global celebrity) x 2 (local verbal cues, global verbal cues) full factorial between-subjects experiment is set up with 219 Indian consumers. Ethnocentrism is measured at the individual level. Results show that highly ethnocentric individuals respond more positively (attitude towards the ad and self-brand congruity) to localization and glocalization advertising strategies compared to a globalization strategy, while lowly ethnocentric individuals do not respond differently to these strategies. The practical and theoretical implications as well as suggestions for further research are discussed.