The DOI matches its Crossref record; 16 of the 16 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Humanizing brands: When brands seem to be like me, part of me, and in a relationship with me
Open accessAbstract
We review a growing body of research in consumer behavior that has examined when consumers humanize brands by perceiving them as like, part of, or in a relationship with themselves. One research stream shows that sometimes consumers perceive brands as having human‐like forms, minds, and personality characteristics. A second stream identifies ways that a consumer perceives a brand as being congruent with or connected to the self. Finally, a third highlights that consumers can view brands in ways that are analogous to the types of relationships they have with people. We review research in these three areas and point out connections among these research streams. In part, we accomplish this by showing that factors associated with the SEEK model, which are designed to explain anthropomorphic tendencies, are also relevant to other ways of humanizing brands. We identify major propositions derived from this research and several areas for which additional research is needed. We conclude with recommendations for the many opportunities for expanding our conceptual and empirical understanding of this domain.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Putnam, R. (2000) · doi:10.1145/358916.361990 · Cited by 17,114
Possessions and the Extended Self
Belk, R. W. (1988) · Journal of Consumer Research · doi:10.1086/209154 · Cited by 9,064
Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research
Fournier, S. (1998) · Journal of Consumer Research · doi:10.1086/209515 · Cited by 7,542
On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism
Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.114.4.864 · Cited by 4,069 · cited 5×
“…the domain of humanizing brands seem to be like me, part of me, and in a relationship with me, Journal of Drivers of Humanizing Brands (adapted from Epley et al., 2007) Types of Drivers Sociality Motivation Effectance Motivation Elicited Agent Knowledge Dispositional Chronic Loneliness Low…”
BackgroundInfluentialThe Ties That Bind: Measuring the Strength of Consumers’ Emotional Attachments to Brands
Thomson, M., MacInnis, D. J., & Whan Park, C. (2005) · Journal of Consumer Psychology · doi:10.1207/s15327663jcp1501_10 · Cited by 2,713 · cited 6×
“…attached to a brand, the more they engage in pro-brand behaviors, such as brand advocacy (e.g., positive WOM, defending the brand against criticism) and brand loyalty behaviors (e.g., brand commitment, refusal to consider alternative brands; e.g., Park et al., 2010, 2013a; Thomson et al., 2005).”
BackgroundInfluentialSelf-citationHow Brand Community Practices Create Value
Schau, H. J., Muñiz, A. M., & Arnould, E. J. (2009) · Journal of Marketing · doi:10.1509/jmkg.73.5.30 · Cited by 2,444
Who Sees Human?: The Stability and Importance of Individual Differences in Anthropomorphism
Waytz, A., Cacioppo, J., & Epley, N. (2010) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/1745691610369336 · Cited by 1,228
Is That Car Smiling at Me? Schema Congruity as a Basis for Evaluating Anthropomorphized Products
Aggarwal, P., & McGill, A. L. (2007) · Journal of Consumer Research · doi:10.1086/518544 · Cited by 1,078 · cited 2×
“Depicting a set of soda bottles as a “product family” induces greater tendencies to anthropomorphize compared to describing them as a “product line” (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007, study 2).”
BackgroundDirect and indirect effects of self-image congruence on brand loyalty
Kressmann, F., Sirgy, M. J., Herrmann, A., Huber, F., Huber, S., & Lee, D.-J. (2006) · Journal of Business Research · doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2006.06.001 · Cited by 971
Can a Retail Web Site Be Social?
Wang, L. C., Baker, J., Wagner, J. A., & Wakefield, K. (2007) · Journal of Marketing · doi:10.1509/jmkg.71.3.143 · Cited by 672
When consumers and brands talk: Storytelling theory and research in psychology and marketing
Woodside, A. G., Sood, S., & Miller, K. E. (2008) · Psychology & Marketing · doi:10.1002/mar.20203 · Cited by 641
Epley, N., Akalis, S., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02056.x · Cited by 632
Are All Out-Groups Created Equal? Consumer Identity and Dissociative Influence
White, K., & Dahl, D. W. (2007) · Journal of Consumer Research · doi:10.1086/520077 · Cited by 425
Sproull, L., Subramani, M., Kiesler, S., Walker, J., & Waters, K. (1996) · Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1207/s15327051hci1102_1 · Cited by 399
Brand Relationship Quality and Its Value for Personal Contact
Smit, E., Bronner, F., & Tolboom, M. (2007) · Journal of Business Research · doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2006.06.012 · Cited by 233
Touré-Tillery, M., & McGill, A. L. (2015) · Journal of Marketing · doi:10.1509/jm.12.0166 · Cited by 167
Cited by
Blut, M., Wang, C., Wünderlich, N. V., & Brock, C. (2021) · Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science · doi:10.1007/s11747-020-00762-y · Cited by 1,194
Customer service chatbots: Anthropomorphism and adoption
Sheehan, B., Jin, H. S., & Gottlieb, U. (2020) · Journal of Business Research · doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.04.030 · Cited by 667
Kim, S. Y., Schmitt, B. H., & Thalmann, N. M. (2019) · Marketing Letters · doi:10.1007/s11002-019-09485-9 · Cited by 498
We ARe at home: how augmented reality reshapes mobile marketing and consumer-brand relationships.
Scholz, J., & Duffy, K. (2018) · Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services · doi:10.1016/j.jretconser.2018.05.004 · Cited by 397
Novak, T. P., & Hoffman, D. L. (2019) · Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science · doi:10.1007/s11747-018-0608-3 · Cited by 332
Metadata
- Authors
- MacInnis, D. J., & Folkes, V. S.
- Venue
- Journal of Consumer Psychology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2017-01-11
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 355-374
- ISSN
- 1057-7408 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-7663
- OpenAlex
- W2574739206
- Cited by
- 442
- References
- 16
- FWCI
- 55.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.