A study on the effect of self image congruity on purchase intentions of smart phone brands with special reference to emerging adulthoods in bengaluru

Abstract

The Indian retail sector is witnessing a dramatic change in recent times. It can be attributed to many factors like growing consumerism, advancement in technology, demographic shift, global perspectives in retail etc. However the dominance of organized retail in India is very limited and still 93% of the market is served by the unorganized sector as per the Boston Consulting group, KPMGIndiaretailing.com (2016-17). But, consumers are now looking at organized formats for their purchase. Especially in the context of smart phones purchase, urban markets tend to have been equipped with exclusive showrooms and service centers to cater to the needs of consumers opting to buy smart phones. Further, the advent of technology and e-commerce has made purchase intentions and purchases simpler with the click of few buttons. Subtly, the concept of consumerism is increasing the opportunities for consumers to be in the midst of products or services for an extended period in time than ever before. This has led to the phenomenon of self-image congruity, where consumers have started synchronizing their personal self image along with the product s image, which becomes a check list for their purchases. Therefore their buying intention with respect to products or services is affected by the self-image and product-image in a very big way. This study aims at understanding the self-image congruity theory with respect to emerging adulthoods brand loyalty and also tests whether self-image (customer related attributes) and product/brand image (smart phone related attributes) translates into brand loyalty which would in turn lead to purchase intentions. The study had 394 valid responses from the target respondents and is a descriptive study which aimed at finding the difference of opinion on the various study constructs with reference to their demographic variables. The various attributes under each of the factors were reduced and related factors were extracted through exploratory factor analysis. The results of exploratory factor analysis