Effects of Pride, Object Relevance and Message Type on Brand Attitude

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of brand message type on the object relevance between consumers and brands and to identify the mediation role of the object relevance in the effect of the message type on brand attitude. Research design, data, and methodology - Types of pride are classified into hubristic pride and authentic pride, and brand message types are divided into ability message and warmth message. Restaurant brand was selected by empirical study, and the experiment was performed with 2 (pride type: hubristic versus authentic) × 2 (message type: ability message versus warmth message) between-subjects design. The subjects of the experiment consisted of the undergraduates taking courses related to marketing. A preliminary step was taken to explore the difference in the perceived level of object relevance induced from each type of message between the consumer group that felt hubristic pride and the other group that felt authentic pride. This study analyzed the mediating role of the object relevance in the effects of the message type on brand attitude by means of Bootstrap method for each of the pride groups. Results - The results from the empirical analysis are summed up as follows. Regardless of pride types they felt in advance, consumers perceived their object relevance to be higher in the warmth information message than in the ability information message, and object relevance was analyzed to have a positive effect on brand attitude. It was analyzed that, regardless of pride types, object relevance played full mediation roles in the effect of warmth information versus ability information message on brand attitude. Conclusions - Based on the results, it may be suggested that marketers of a brand should endeavor to develop a warmth information message rather than a ability information message to prompt consumers to perceive the object relevance between their own brands and consumers, regardless of pride types, as long as a c