I Don’t Know Why, I Just Know It: That Car Is ‘Me’.

Marketers know that the more consumers consciously identify themselves with a particular brand, the more positive they’ll feel about it. But for all the promotional techniques advertisers use to foster those associations, a new study shows our identification with a particular product can occur without our giving it much thought.

Most promotional campaigns are based on the theory that consumers need to consciously identify with a brand to feel positive about it. New studies show, however, that consumers may be unaware they are making associations between themselves and products or brands being referenced in ads. But when such a link is formed, it’s very likely the individual will develop a positive attitude toward that product.

“We used to believe that consumers’ attitudes toward a particular product was the result of an intense and ongoing process, beginning with promotions which would target customers likely to associate with a brand’s image,” explains Andrew Perkins, an assistant professor of management at Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management.

“Given that 99 percent of all advertising basically is ignored, we now believe that’s not necessarily occurring.”

Instead, Perkins and others show that simply linking an object or product to a person’s self-concept causes that person to form a generally positive attitude toward that object even when the person has no prior opinion about it.

“While we still believe deep, personal interaction between the customer and the brand encourages consumers to identify with the brand, we believe this association begins on a more unconscious level and is related to their positive feelings about themselves,” Perkins says.

In a study titled “Implicit Self-Referencing: The Self-Concept as a Source of Implicit Attitude Formation,” Perkins and University of Washington researchers Mark Forehand and Anthony Greenwald conduct two experiments that show pairing an object with an individual’s self-concept results in a positive attitude toward that object — even when the individual has no prior opinion of or interaction with the object.

Based on earlier research having to do with automatic attitude formation and self-association, the researchers sought to show that the positive attitude toward the object is generated as a result of the subjects’ positive feelings about themselves.

“Generally everyone’s self-concept is positive, so linking an object to the ‘self’ does result in a positive attitude toward that object,” Perkins explains.

To demonstrate how easily an association can be created between a consumer and an object, Perkins and his colleagues asked participants to complete a simple categorization test on a computer, pairing words that represent the self, such as “my,” “mine,” and “me” with a trivial target object, specifically an analog or digital clock. One group of subjects was meant to identify with the analog clocks and the other with digital clocks.

The analog clock subjects were told to press the letter “d” on the keyboard if words related to analog clocks or “self” appeared on the monitor and the letter “k” if words related to digital clocks or “other” appeared on the screen. Participants meant to associate with digital clocks completed categorizations with “self” and “digital” sharing a response.

In a second experiment, they replaced the clock images with a series of fictitious individual brand names.

After manipulating associations between the subjects and objects, the researchers utilized the Implicit Association test to determine if these links to the subjects generated positive attitudes toward these objects. Their earlier studies on the unconscious effects of celebrity voiceovers on brand attitude were among the first to apply this computer-based categorization task to consumer behavior.

“We found that the creation of even trivial associations between an individual and an object prompted the individual to identify with and feel positive toward that object,” Perkins says.

On the other hand, the researchers also believe that an individual with very poor self-esteem could potentially produce a more negative evaluation of the associated object.

Perkins’ research on brand equity, consumer behavior, marketing and group decision-making processes has been published in a number of scholarly publications, including the Journal of Consumer Research and Advances in Consumer Research.

A graduate of Washington State University, where he earned his undergraduate and MBA degrees, Perkins received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington Business School in Seattle. He joined the Jones School in 2003.

For more information at http://www.rice.edu