Brand cultural symbolism, brand authenticity, and consumer well-being: the moderating role of cultural involvement

This paper aims to improve knowledge regarding the complicated relationship among brand cultural symbolism, consumer cultural involvement, brand authenticity and consumer well-being. Although some literature has mentioned the relationship between the above concepts, these relationships have not been confirmed by empirical studies.

Based on the self-determination theory and the authenticity theory, a causal model of brand cultural symbolism, consumers’ enduring cultural involvement, brand authenticity and consumer well-being is developed. The structural equation model and multiple regressions are used to test the hypothesis. The primary data are based on an online survey conducted in China (N = 533). A total of six brands from the USA, France and China were selected as study samples.

The data reveal that brand cultural symbolism has a positive relationship with brand authenticity and consumer well-being; brand authenticity partially mediates the relationship between brand cultural symbolism and consumer well-being; and find a weakening effect of consumers’ enduring cultural involvement on the relationship between brand cultural symbolism and brand authenticity.

The weakening effect of consumers’ enduring cultural involvement on the relationship between brand cultural symbols and brand authenticity should be further verified through experiments and the model should be tested in different cultural backgrounds from a cross-cultural perspective.

The present study offers novel insights for brand managers by highlighting brand authenticity as the fundamental principle that explains the effect of cultural symbolism of brands, consumers’ enduring cultural involvement, as well as eudaimonic and hedonic well-being.

The findings suggest that cultural significance of a brand is closely related to brand authenticity and consumer well-being; however, on consumers with a highly enduring cultural involvement, the effect of brand culture symbolism and brand authenticity is weakened. This is an interesting finding because in this case, consumers may measure brand authenticity more based on the brand actual behavior (e.g. brand non-commercial tendency and brand social responsibility) rather than the symbolic image.