Selfie or self-acceptance: does matching of brand communication content to consumer goals enhance consumer evaluations?

A large body of research suggests consumers are disillusioned with brands, disappointed by marketing strategies and increasingly aware of brand persuasion tactics. This has led to increased ad avoidance and loss of interest in brand communication as a resource for consumer identity formation. Brands have misunderstood what consumers are seeking and flooded them with artfully designed brand communication instead of finding ways to engage that consumers perceive as meaningful. The question remains, how to provide consumers with identity-relevant brand communication that assists consumers in their search for meaning to facilitate deeper brand connections. This thesis responds to this apparent disconnect and addresses whether matching brand communication content, either as a print ad or as a story, to consumer goals leads to more favourable consumer evaluations. Four studies were conducted with findings obtained through Structural Equation Modelling suggesting that a match between consumer goals and goals displayed in brand communication positively impacts consumer evaluations. This effect was shown via an increase in perceived state-authenticity, which also results in a reduction in situational persuasion knowledge. In contrast, a mismatch had the opposite effect. Persuasion knowledge by itself did not mediate the relationships. Stories were identified as a suitable application strategy to improve brand evaluations through narrative transportation but are ineffective or even backfire when the story does not match consumer aspirations. The last and therefore fifth study in this series used a Virtual Reality shopping centre to allow behaviour to be observed whereby consumers showed preference for a window display aligned with their aspirations. The data was analysed using Binary Logistic Regression. In addition to adding to the current theories surrounding the matching hypothesis, this thesis aimed to provide marketers with insight into improving brand communication and building meaningful brand-consumer connections, which may contribute to reducing ad avoidance.