AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF CONSUMER-COMPANY IDENTIFICATION MEASURES

摘要

Consumer-company identification (C-C ID), which represents a willful merging of a company to an individual's self-concept (Bhattacharya and Sen 2003), is a phenomenon that has garnered significant attention from marketing researchers. This is because the merged self-concept is a powerful motivational force that prompts customers to engage in loyalty behaviors (Ahearne, Bhattacharya, and Gruen 2005; Homburg, Wieseke, and Hoyer 2009; Lam, Ahearne, Hu, and Schillewaert 2010). However, nearly all of the published research utilizes the Mael and Ashforth (1992) scale (M&A) or the Bergami and Bagozzi (2000) scale (B&B) which were created and tested in an emplo-yee context. The applicability of these scales to the new consumer domain has not been verified with proper psychometric testing. Without such grounding the potential for misunderstanding due to improper measures is high, antecedent and outcome relationships may be missed, and the extent of company sourced identification may be miscalculated (Ping 2004). The current research attempts to address these concerns by comparing and contrasting the existing C-C ID measures via a series of psychometric tests.