Lin Chien-Huang, Huang Yidan
Department of Business Administration, National Central University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
Front Psychol. 2018 Nov 5;9:2070. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02070. eCollection 2018.
The universal mantra, "The customer is our king," has led to considerable focus on the servant-anthropomorphized brand. However, does your "king" want to be served as a "king"? This research aims to examine how anthropomorphic brand role, self-construals and consumer responses to brands interact. In this study, four sequential experiments show that consumers with an interdependent self-construal are likely to respond more favorably toward anthropomorphic brands playing superior 'master' roles than toward those playing subordinate 'servant' roles. Here we distinguish between two types of superior role (master and mentor) based on behavior and communications. We also explore the underlying psychological mechanism of followership, as demonstrated through blind followership of someone in a master role and rational followership of someone in a mentor role. Additionally, when a third-party (recipient) is involved in the relationship between a consumer and a brand, the giver-recipient relationship moderates the relationship between an anthropomorphised brand role and self-construals.
“顾客就是上帝”这句普遍适用的口头禅，使得人们相当关注被拟人化为仆人的品牌。然而，你的“上帝”希望被当作“上帝”来侍奉吗？本研究旨在探讨拟人化品牌角色、自我构念以及消费者对品牌的反应是如何相互作用的。在这项研究中，四个连贯的实验表明，具有相互依存自我构念的消费者，相较于扮演从属“仆人”角色的拟人化品牌，更有可能对扮演优越“主人”角色的拟人化品牌做出更积极的反应。在此，我们根据行为和沟通方式区分出两种优越角色（主人和导师）。我们还探究了追随者身份的潜在心理机制，这体现在对处于主人角色者的盲目追随以及对处于导师角色者的理性追随上。此外，当第三方（接受者）介入消费者与品牌的关系时，给予者 - 接受者关系会调节拟人化品牌角色与自我构念之间的关系。
