The Effects of Brand-Context Congruence

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine if brand-context congruence has an effect on customer-based brand equity and whether brand image impacts this relationship. The relationship between an ad and the surrounding context, so called context congruence, has gained a lot of attention. This as it has been shown to generate beneficial outcomes for brands, such as better brand recall, recognition, and higher attention. Simultaneously, the rise of digital marketing and technological advancements have created new techniques such as targeted advertising, which allows for ads to target a customer rather than a specific website, leaving the ads uncontrollable. Recent events have demonstrated the risks of targeted advertising, where brands’ ads appeared on undesired websites and seeming to endorse, or being affiliated with such content, and thus met with criticism from consumers. However, hardly any research has been done on the role of this new phenomenon as a direct impactor on the brand and consequently brand equity. To test this, an experiment was conducted using two brands with different brand images: symbolic and functional, and these were exposed to two conditions: congruent and incongruent, using websites to either create a match or not. These four conditions were then measured on six dependent variables derived from customer-based brand equity theory. 221 consumers participated in the experiment. A first test was performed on all subjects, and a follow-up test was run using subject with high brand awareness leaving 91 respondents. Significance was reached for the brand-context congruence at a 95% confidence interval, with an effect size reaching up to 18.2%. Brand awareness was found to be a necessary precondition among the consumers for there to be an effect. Moreover, a difference of the effect was found depending on the brand image, where congruence generated different outcomes. It is thus implied that brand-context congruence is a mutual generation of customer-based brand equity, leaving opportunities to capitalise on the online environment in a more strategic manner.