Author(s)

Shenghong Ye, Guobin Wu^*

School of Management, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.

Since ancient times, relation-oriented Chinese people have attached great importance to the philosophy that courtesy calls for reciprocity. However, when choosing gifts, we are always caught in a dilemma: give him what I love, or what he wants. By bringing two variables—relationship type and self-construal into the model studying consumers’ gift-giving behavior, this paper aims to find out solutions to the problem above from the perspective of the consistency of brand image’s influence on the consumers’ purchase intention. The results show that: 1) the brand image congruence and the relationship type have significant reciprocal effect on purchase intention, and 2) the interaction between brand image congruence and self-construal has remarkable impact on purchasing intention.

Relationship Types, Communal Relationships, Exchange Relationships, Self-Construal, Brand Image and Gift Givers Congruence, Brand Image and Gift Receivers Congruence

Ye, S. and Wu, G. (2016) The Influence of Brand Image Congruence, Relationship Type and Self-Construal on Consumers’ Purchase Intention. Open Journal of Business and Management, 4, 535-548. doi: 10.4236/ojbm.2016.43058.