Understanding Consumers’ Brand Aspiration: A Scale Development and Validation

Being a dream brand and distinctive among other competitors often results from the brand aspiration signals conveyed by the brand that consumers choose to display and process. Conceptual models of social psychology recognize that an individual’s strong aspiration works as a driving force towards the motives for action and create behavior when time tends to be consistent with the aspiration that the individual pursues (Sheldon et al. 2004; Pyszczynski et al. 2004; Sheldon 2004; Kasser and Ryan 1993, 1996; Kim et al. 2003). Building on these notions, the effect of aspirations on consumer luxury brand preference have been demonstrated (e.g. Truong et al. 2012). Recognizing the importance of goal oriented motives for developing strong behavior, practitioners too focused on imparting aspirational values over and above their stiff price competition to get a competitive advantage.

Despite this interest, branding literature offers limited guidance on the observable characteristics of consumers’ brand aspirations that might influence behavior. This understanding is vital for several reasons. First, increased attention on consumers’ aspirations in the academic literature has gained support for managing consumers’ brand attachment (Park et al. 2006). Second, the significance of brand aspirations in shaping consumer behavior is interesting as self-determination theory in social psychology. Ryan and Deci (2000) suggest that individual motivation is concerned with the development and functioning of personality in the social environment. Third, an individual’s aspirations determine their important life decisions, define specific perceived values and also influences and shape the perceptions, judgments and behavior (Kasser 2002; Weinstein et al. 2009). Thus, the present study addresses this need for a measure of Brand Aspirations by empirically constructing and validating a measure of consumers’ brand aspirations and further tests its impact on consumer brand relationship outcomes.