پیامدهای مشارکت مشتری و ارتباط برند سلف مشتری Consequences of customer engagement and customer self-brand connection

Introduction The effects of the international financial crisis at the end of the past decade were especially far-reaching in the banking sectors of the world’s most developed countries, triggering radical changes and a notable escalation in the competitive climate of the modern banking system (Monferrer et al., 2016). Some of the most obvious changes that banks have had to face are found in the development and application of new information technologies, expanded portfolios of products and services and changes in consumers, who now tend to have more diverse needs and requirements to be met (Marinkovic and Obradovic, 2015). These new conditions have undoubtedly affected the behaviors and attitudes of banking consumers (Hansen, 2014; Johnson and Peterson, 2014; Kaytaz and Gul, 2014; Levy and Hino, 2016; Monferrer et al., 2016). The Marketing Science Institute (MSI, 2011) identified the loss of trust in financial institutions as one of the most obvious consequences of these events, challenging the sustainability of the current relationships between banks and their clients (Monferrer et al., 2016). In such a turbulent environment, maintaining long-lasting sustainable relationships with clients becomes a crucial challenge for banks, even more so than in the past (Marinkovic and Obradovic, 2015). Banking is part of the services sector, and as such, four of its main defining characteristics are intangibility, variability, perishability and inseparability (Adamson et al., 2003). In this regard, many studies recommend that banks should steer their marketing efforts toward intangible variables – such as brand management – that enable them to strengthen positive client behaviors and attitudes toward them (Arbore and Busacca, 2009; Marinkovic and Obradovic, 2015; Khan et al., 2016; Adamson et al., 2003; Moorthi and Mohan, 2017). In this line, the banking sector is currently giving greater priority to repairing and building sustainable bonds with its customers, thus generating a kind of brand-based emotional attachment due to the guiding paradigm of relationship marketing (Khan et al., 2016; Levy and Hino, 2016; Monferreret al., 2016; Adamson et al., 2003). In effect, the aim of relational marketing is to establish lasting long-term relationships with customers, a challenging target in today’s competitive and complex environment. One of the main objectives of branding is therefore to build solid emotional bonds with customers, thereby ensuring that their first option when purchasing or consuming will be the promoted brand (Aaker, 1991; Keller, 1993; Wang et al., 2012). Better-positioned bank brands are more likely to be chosen by consumers, although they must be constantly vigilant so as not to lose ground to their competitors. In this framework, the long-term cognitive and emotional bonds that brands can establish with their customers will be vital to their competitiveness (Grönroos, 1995). For this reason, customers’ self-congruity has attracte a great deal of research attention in recent years (Aguirre-Rodriguez et al., 2012). Self-congruity is the match between consumers’ self-concept and the image or personality of the product, supplier or service (Sirgy, 1985; Hosany and Martin, 2012). Self-congruity explains why consumers buy products and services not only for their functions but also because of what they offer emotionally and symbolically. The match between self-concept and the image of a bank brand is a powerful bond that confers a sustainable competitive advantage, is an exceptionally persuasive factor and becomes a switching cost for the consumer.