The effect of selective store location strategy and self-congruity on consumers’ apparel brand attitudes toward luxury vs. non-luxury

This research discusses the effect of selective store location strategy on consumers’ brand attitudes, its variation based on brand luxuriousness, and consumers’ psychological mechanisms underlying this choice. To test the selective location effect, consumers’ perceptions of three apparel brands with different characteristics (well-known luxury, well-known non-luxury, and unknown brand) were assessed. Self-congruity theory was employed to discuss the psychological mechanism of brand attitude formation. The result of analysis of variance and structural equation modeling on 312 cases collected in Japan showed selective store location influenced consumers’ luxury brand attitudes positively, while its impact was negative in the non-luxury case. In addition, its effect on the unknown brand was not significant. The selective location also contributed ideal social self-congruity with brand user imagery, while its impact was negative on actual self-congruity. Moreover, ideal social self-congruity contributed luxury attitude: In the non-luxury case, its impact was negative, while the impact of actual self-congruity was positive: Self-congruity affected the unknown brand very slightly. This result implies non-luxury brand equity is hard to increase via selective location strategy, while this approach may be effective for luxury. Our results also suggest the ability of self-congruity and brand luxuriousness to predict the selective location effect.