A Theory of Affective Self-Affinity: Definitions and Application to a Company and its Business

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Marketing researchers increasingly recognize the fact that individuals may come to have perception- and affect-laden relationships to companies that may influence their personal behaviors and the behaviors of organizations they represent--behaviors that are relevant to those companies' business (Bengtsson 2003; Bhattacharya and Sen 2003; Fullerton 2005; Neville, Bell, and Mengilc 2005; Weiss, Anderson, and MacInnis 1999). It has been suggested that these relationships may even involve identification with the company (Ahearne, Bhattacharya, and Gruen 2005; Bhattacharya and Sen 2003; Cardador and Pratt 2006; Scott and Lane 2000), which is consistent with the increasingly popular notion that consumption, markets, and companies' products and brands are of significance in individuals' identity work, becoming entangled with their sense of self (e.g., Belk 1988; Fournier 1998: Holt 2002; McCracken 1986). Moreover, there seems to be increasing appreciation among researchers in both marketing and management of the fact that all heterogeneous business-relevant actors, including organizations, are eventually represented by individuals (or individual agents) (Ahearne, Bhattacharya, and Gruen 2005; Freeman 1984; Rowley and Moldoveanu 2003). This is consistent with Jones's (1995) and Scott and Lane's (2000) view that the various stakeholders of a company basically consist of individuals and groups of individuals. However, earlier marketing research focusing on individuals' perception- and affect-laden, identity-involving relationships to companies has not systematically examined how, specifically, such identity relationships to companies will stem from identity relationships to various other things that are relevant to people and associated with companies. Such relevant things include products (1) and brands, product categories, groups of people, communications and advertising, and even activities and areas of interest as well as ideas and ideals. Besides, the earlier research has touched on the influence of such a company relationship on the individual's behaviors merely as a consumer or customer (Ahearne, Bhattacharya, and Gruen 2005; Bhattacharya and Sen 2003; Fournier 1998), or an employee (see Pratt 1998), or customer and employee (Cardador and Pratt 2006). Influences on the heterogeneous business-relevant behaviors of individuals, let alone the organizations they represent, have not been comprehensively examined--in a way that would refrain from assigning the individual to a certain pre-defined, exclusive stakeholder class, such as customers, employees, or investors. In other words, no such integrative theoretical conceptualization has so far emerged that would apply to the influence of individuals' perception- and affect-laden, identity-involving relationships to companies on their various behaviors, their stakeholder class notwithstanding. In this article, we address these marketing research gaps by introducing an integrative theoretical framework that examines antecedents and behavioral consequences of a special kind of identity relationship that an individual may have with a company, which we term affective self-affinity (ASA). A further and even more fundamental contribution is to give a theoretical definition of ASA in the first place, and to explicate how it works in principle. In so doing, we bring together certain existing theories in (social) psychologist consumer research that are characterized by roughly similar foci on the interactions between individuals' perceptions, affective evaluations, and identification with a variety of things but have not so far been integrated within one coherent theoretical conceptualization. The theories in question include those of self-concept congruence (S en and Bhattacharya 2001; Sirgy 1982), (social) identification (Ashforth and Mael 1989; Bergami and Bagozzi 2000; Bhattacharya and Sen 2003; Dukerich, Golden, and Shortell 2002; Hogg and Vaughan 2002; Scott and Lane 2000; Tajfel and Turner 1986), and enduring (or ego-) involvement (Celsi and Olson 1988; Higie and Feick 1989; Richins and Bloch 1986), as well as theories concerning the extended self (Ahuvia 2005; Belk 1988), (possession) attachment (Ball In order to bring in the marketing perspective we apply the ASA theory to a company and its business. …