The impact of the personality congruence triangle in the level of actual- and ideal personality congruences on online engagement and purchasing intention for fashion brands - The case of My Jewellery brand

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RADBOUD UNIVERSITY

Nijmegen School of Management

MASTER THESIS

The impact of the personality congruence triangle in the

level of actual- and ideal personality congruences on online

engagement and purchasing intention for fashion brands

The case of My Jewellery brand

Name: Tiba Dorina

Student number: S1026347

Programme: Marketing – Business Administration Master’s programme

Email address: dorina.tiba@ru.nl

Supervisor: Dr. Ir. Nanne G. Migchels

Second examiner: Dr. Csilla Horváth

Management Research, Department of Marketing, the Netherlands.

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Abstract

In this research, the role and impact of actual-, and ideal personality congruence had been investigated between customers, brand and influencers in fashion product categories on the platform of Instagram in case of a fashion start-up. Within this research, a personality congruence triangle had been developed to contribute to the existing literature, and its impact had been investigated on the actual-, and ideal personality level. In order to evaluate the impact of the personality congruence triangle on the online engagement and on purchasing intension, an investigation had been conducted in the case of the My Jewellery brand, which is a successful Dutch fashion brand who is engaged in influencer marketing. Both qualitative and quantitative research had been taken based on pre-tests. In total, 12 people had been interviewed and 110 respondents filled the survey who already engage with the brand online. Based on the answer of the respondents, customers can feel the personality congruence more between themselves-, the brand-, and the influencers on the level of actual-personalities, rather than on the level of ideal personality congruence. As a result of the research, currently, the respondents have a moderated level of online engagement in the content of the My Jewellery brand, but this rate could be increased if the brand would take the personality congruence triangle into account on the level of actual self-congruence which has a significant positive impact also on purchasing intention. Taking the findings of this study into account, might help the online marketers of fashion companies to properly choose influencers to reach a higher level of online engagement and develop a stronger emotional bond with their customers by the self-congruity triangle on the actual personality congruence level. In addition, suggestions are given on how to interpret the findings. Managerial recommendations are also discussed, and theoretical implications are provided.

Keywords: influencer marketing, brand personality, personality congruence, ideal- actual self-congruence, fashion industry

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Table of content

1. Introduction ... 6

2. Literature review ... 9

2.1. Influencer Endorsement on Instagram ... 9

2.2. Brand personalities ... 10

2.3. Self-Brand-Influencer brand personality congruence ... 12

2.3.1. Brand-Consumer personality congruence ... 14

2.3.2. Brand-Influencer personality congruence ... 15

2.3.3. Consumer-Influencer personality congruence ... 15

2.4. Self-congruity ... 16

2.4.1. Actual self-personality congruence ... 16

2.4.2. Ideal self-personality congruence ... 17

2.5. Online engagement and purchasing intension ... 18

2.6. Fashion companies ... 19

2.7. Conceptual model ... 20

3. Methodology ... 21

3.1. My Jewellery brands ... 21

3.2. Methodology structure ... 22

3.3. Reliability and Validity ... 23

3.4. Research Ethics ... 23

3.5. Pre-test ... 24

4. Qualitative research ... 27

4.1. Data collection method ... 27

4.2. Methodology of the interviews ... 27

4.3. Analysis of the interviews ... 29

4.4. Result of the interviews ... 30

5. Quantitative research ... 39

5.1. Data collection method ... 39

5.2. Methodology of the survey ... 39

5.3. Analysis of the survey ... 41

5.4. Results of the survey ... 43

6. Discussion and recommendation ... 51

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6.2. Theoretical implications ... 54 6.3. Managerial implications ... 56 6.4. Limitations ... 57 6.5. Further research ... 58 References ... 60 APPENDIX ... 66

Appendix 1.: Questions of the pre-test ... 66

Appendix 2: Used document during the pre-test ... 67

Appendix 3: Questions of the interviews ... 68

Appendix 5.: Distribution of interview respondents by background variables (N = 12) ... 72

Appendix 6: Transcript of interview 1. ... 73

Appendix 18: Cumulative metric data of the personality similarities circle ... 156

Appendix 19: Metric data of the personality similarities circle on the level of actual-and ideal selves ... 157

Appendix 20: Dimensions measured by the questions of the survey and their sources ... 160

Appendix 21: Questionnaire of the survey ... 167

Appendix 22.: Distribution of survey respondents by background variables ... 183

Appendix 23.: Analysis of the survey ... 185

Appendix 24: Mean rank differences in the clusters based on the Independent Sample Mann Whithey U-test ... 233

Appendix 25: Research Integrity Form ... 234

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1. Introduction

Brand personality means enduring human-like characteristics of a brands (Aaker, 1997). According to Aaker “strong brands do not just happen” (Aaker, 1996, p. 358); thus, firms actively try to influence and shape their perceived brand personality in order to develop a long- term emotional relationship with their customers (Fournier, 1998). To form the desirable brand personalities, companies use various communication tools, endorsements and programmes to anthropomorphize objects and humanize brands. (Fournier, 1998). One of the most visible and best-known ways of personality creations for a brand is user imagery, which is the set of human characteristics associated with the typical user of the brand which could be reached by celebrity endorsers. (Ouwersloot-Tudorica, 2001)

Digital media has gained more importance during the previous years which resulted in the emergence of a third-party endorser, the social media influencers who could shape their audience’ attitudes and behaviour (Brown-Fiorella, 2013). Social media influencers take the role of celebrity endorsement in the social media context as they tend to have more influence on buying behaviour than celebrities due to the trust effect (Lou-Yuan, 2019).

Brands have a symbolic meaning for customers to express their personality and facilitate social belongings; therefore, the personality congruence is a vital part of marketing tactics. Some studies (Törn, 2012; Choi-Rifon, 2012) investigated the match-up hypothesis, which refers to the fit between the self-, brand- and endorser. This fit could occur on the image or product level, but it could also occur on the personality level. Within my thesis, I created a personality congruence triangle model which represents the personality congruence of self-, brand- and influencer which should occur to reach a successful endorsement.

When a personality fit occurs between the brand-, self- and influencer, consumers are more likely to form positive evaluations about the brand and message, which could have a significant impact on their online engagement and purchasing behaviour (Shan et al., 2019). When a congruence occurs between the brand- and consumer’s personality, consumers are likely to find the brands more attractive as it enables them to maintain and express their personality and strengthen their values, beliefs or sense of belonging (Luffarelli et al., 2019). Due to the homophily and the trust effect the role of the influencer’s personality cannot be neglected from the triangle of personality congruences as the wrong endorser could undermine the congruence between the brand and the self and harm the brand.

Personality congruences could occur both on the level of actual- and ideal self of the customers. By imagining a brand as a person and processing the content of influencers,

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customers could have a perception that the personality of them is congruent with their realised actual self, the way they consider themselves now. The perceived personality congruence could also occur on the level of ideal self of the customers, which means that they feel the personality similarity between the brand and the influencer closer to their desired future self (Malär et al.,

2011).

Fashion products tend to be high-involvement, hedonic products. Fashion brands have a symbolic meaning for customers to express their personality, their actual- or ideal self; therefore, the role of the personality congruence is crucial within this product category

(Bhardwaj – Fairhurst, 2010). High-street fast fashion brands offer less unique and

personalised products and they tend to collaborate with celebrities to endorse their brands, while fashion start-ups offer products that are not massed produced and often personalised; therefore, their products could be excellently used for personality expression. On the other hand, fashion start-up companies tend to collaborate with influencer and not with celebrities.

Companies within this industry have a tendency to use endorsement which could be the representation of the ideal self-concept of their audience. Since the Unilever’s successful “real beauty” campaign, which used endorser who presented the actual self of their customer and since the negative critics that fashion companies received about the negative influence on people self-image several fashion companies shifted to endorsements where the personality congruence could occur or on the actual self-level of the customers instead of the ideal one. Even if the impact of the actual self-congruences positively tested on the emotional attachment, some question still remains: does the age of the endorsement with ideal self-congruence is really over in the fashion industry? Should marketers also emphasis the actual personality congruences in influencer endorsement on the social media content to reach a higher level of online engagement on every social media platform, even on Instagram where idealised and heavily edited content is mainly used (Kleemans et al., 2016)?

Several researchers (Dhar-Kumar, 2014; Şahin – Şahin, 2017; Prenticea et al., 2019) reported that there is a significant impact of brand personality congruence and influencer marketing on online engagement. Customers’ engagement on social media could be seen as a measurement of the success of influencer marketing. The increased engagement has a huge impact on the consumer’s decision-making process and purchase intention, which could be viewed as the tendency of consumers to have willingness to buy a product in the near future.

Even if the brand personality studies emerged during the previous years, most of the studies investigated only the congruence between customers and brand; thus, within my thesis, I focused not only on the brand-consumer match but also on the brand-endorser and the

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endorser-consumer personality congruence. Even if these three types of congruence were tested before (Choi-Rifon, 2012; Brown-Fiorella, 2013), most studies consider celebrities as an endorser in the offline environment and not social media influencers in the online environment; thus, I took influencers’ personality into account during my research. Furthermore, as the match-up hypothesis could lead to increased online engagement, which could lead to purchasing intension, I tested the extent of it to deter that the personality congruence on the social media content really leads to purchasing intention or just increased online engagement.

Furthermore, the industry-specific personality congruences are less investigated, and the impact of the personality congruence has also been neglected on the platform of Instagram, even if it is the most used online platform for influencer marketing, where idealised contents are mainly represented (Harris-Bardey, 2019). To address this gap, I measured the brand personality congruences impact in the case of a successful Dutch fashion start-up, called My

Jewellery. My research aims to take an industry-specific perspective to highlight the importance

of the personality congruences in case of the My Jewellery brand and investigate the impact of the brand-customer-influencer personality congruency on the level of actual-, and ideal selves on the online engagement and purchase intention on Instagram. Based on the above-mentioned gaps in research, the following research question was formalised:

RQ: How the outcome of the personality congruence triangle -on the level of actual- and ideal personalities- would impact online engagement and purchasing

intention for a fashion brand on Instagram?

Therefore, the current study contributes to the literature on the importance of the brand personality congruences between the self, - brand, - and influencer on the level of actual-, and ideal self-congruence in the influencer marketing and its outcomes in the fashion industry. The developed personality congruence triangle could be used in influencer marketing studies to make the understanding of the personality congruence easier. As a practical contribution of my research, the example of a successful fashion-start-up could be a guideline for entrepreneurs in the industry to properly choose the intended brand personality and try to reach self-congruency through influencer endorsements. Although, the results of the study are only valid for brands with same brand personality and product category than My Jewellery brand belongs to, but similar companies after this study could design their intended brand personality easier and choose their influencers more effectively. Furthermore, by the right choice of influencers, marketers could make influencer marketing more sufficient by collaboration with the right influencers as this study provides an answer, whether it is better to try to reach actual-, or ideal self-personality congruency between customers-, influencers- and brands.

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2. Literature review

2.1. Influencer Endorsement on Instagram

Social influencers or social media influencers (SMIs) are a new type of third-party endorser, who shapes their audience attitudes and behaviour due to their persuasive power

(Brown-Fiorella, 2013). They are “everyday people” who influence their audience purchasing

behaviour through their opinion, knowledge and prominent position within their peers. They have their own community on social media (SM) and they have willingness to create sponsored content in the form of blog posts, videos or pictures within collaborations with companies (Lou-

Yuan, 2019). SMIs have a prominent role in the lifestyle industry of fashion and beauty, they

become popular through their online activity in various SM platforms while they are expressing themselves as individuals and creating their personal brands (Forbes, 2016).

Individuals use the same cognitive processes to evaluate SMIs as they do with other people in their daily life. This para-social identification usually occurs when people’s social needs are unfulfilled; consequently, they are likely to fulfil these needs through alternative solutions online with people who could be considered as a “distant friend” due to the perceived personality congruence between the influencer’s personal brand and self (Shan et al., 2019). The extent of the SMIs could also be suitable for fulfilling social needs as customers are able to interact with them. Furthermore, due to the trust effect, it is extremely important for companies to elaborate more on IM. Most people are more likely to trust recommendations from a third-party rather than from companies. Recent studies also suggested that consumers may have a similar level of trust toward SMIs as they hold for their peers (Lou-Yuan, 2019).

SMIs take the role of celebrities in advertisements and endorsements on SM context as customers could have direct communication with the SMIs, ask their questions and the answer is perceived to be more reliable than the answer from an employee. They seemed to be more organic and natural with their “regular” life than celebrities, which enable their audience to relate more to them personality-wise and create an emotional bond by following and watching their content (Schouten et al., 2020). Their opinion, advice and recommendations are accepted by their followers because of their consumer peer status (Forbes, 2016). SMIs engage, connect and communicate with their followers, which gives the impression of a personal relationship for their audience, which could create a sense of long-term emotional bond. Due to their more direct relationship with followers, SMIs appear more approachable, they could be perceived as distant friends. Therefore, they tend to have higher credibility and trustworthiness compared to

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traditional celebrities which could lead to higher emotional bond between customers and endorsers resulting more successful campaigns (Choi- Rifon, 2012).

When there is a reasonable match between the influencer’s personal brand and the brand personality, the IM provides an excellent opportunity for companies – as a “bridge” - as SMIs could create an emotional connection also between the brand and their follower and enrich the knowledge structure of the brand (Influencers Marketing Hub, 2019). On the other hand, SMIs create more touchpoints with customers and brand awareness as they already have a follower base, they create increased engagement on paid-, earned and owned media (Rietvald et al.,

2020). As a result of their activities, they influence purchasing behaviour which could lead

traffic to the companies’ website and result in real purchases. (Brown-Fiorella, 2013).

Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media sites, which is the main platform of IM. Even if the self-, and personality-presentation is common in every SM platform, on Instagram most of the influencers deliver idealized content, while Facebook profiles reflect the users’ actual personality and not self-idealized personalities. SM users tend to extend their real personalities online in order to escape from or compensate for their offline personality. When users and influencers present their ideal personality online, they aim to create idealized online identities and deliver their ideal self (Harris-Bardey, 2019).

2.2. Brand personalities

Anthropomorphising non-human objects and brands are a tendency of people as they try to explain objects based on their experiences and conceptions (Maehle at all., 2011). Anthropomorphising makes non-human objects seem more familiar as people likely to give human-like characteristics to objects. When people interact with the anthropomorphised object, they feel comfort, familiarity and certainty. Furthermore, over the preference toward humanised brands, most people also frequently purchase products because of their symbolical meaning for different reasons (Kim et al., 2008). Some customer prefers to purchase brands which are congruent with their ideal-, or actual self in order to build- or express their identities, status and aspirations, but this is only possible when consumers identify brands with human personality traits, which are congruent with their personality (Maehle at all. 2011).

The concept of brand personalities defined by Aaker as “The set of human characteristics associated with the brand” (Aaker, 1997, p. 347). Brand personality perceptions are developed by direct and indirect contact with the brand. By direct contact, associations about the brands could be developed by relating brands to the personality of employees, the company,

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brand consumers, SMIs and so on (Lin, 2010). Indirect associations about the brand could be formed by the whole marketing mix, for example, the 4P (Price, Product, Promotion, Place) and other bland elements like brand name, logo, symbols or even from product attributes (Hoyer

et al., 2012). Consequently, brand personality is formed through user imagery, which as the set

of human characteristics associated with the imagined stereotype users of the brand (Sirgy,

1982). Consumers by visualizing the brand, they are processing the information deeper;

therefore, with a well-developed brand personality, they are able to imagine the brand as a people, and imagine an emotional bond with it which has a significant impact on the consumer- brand relationship (Ouwersloot-Tudorica, 2001; Luffarelli et al., 2019).

An established brand personality creates a brand image, influence customer perception, and preferences as it is able to distinguish from competitors and develop a stronger emotional bond and trust between customers and the brand (Malär et al., 2011). This emotional bond leads to customer engagement, long-term desired brand relationship (DBR), Perceived Brand Closeness (PBC), attitudinal- and behavioural loyalty, which has a significant impact on firm performance; thus, brand personalities could create value both for customers and the firm

(Angelie-Joo, 2014). For this reason, firms consciously try to influence their brand personality

perception with different tactics both on offline and on SM environment.

One of the most visible and best-known ways of brand personality creations is user imagery, which could be reached by celebrity endorsers (Ouwersloot-Tudorica, 2001). SMIs take the role of celebrity endorsement in the SM context as they tend to have more influence on buying behaviour than celebrities due to the trust effect (Schouten et al., 2020).

Aaker (1997) proposed the first brand personality measurement scale, which is a five-

factor model. This measurement scale includes five dimensions of brand personality, each divided into a set of facets, which includes enduring and distinct brand personality dimensions. As Image 1. illustrates these five core dimensions and their facets (Eisend-Stokburger-Sauer,

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Image 1.

Title: Brand personality framework

Source: Pantin-Sohier, 2005, pg.70 and Aaker 1997, pg. 352

However, authors have also criticized Aaker’s scale on several grounds (Casidy et

al.,2007). The biggest criticism it received is that the model is partially culture- and situation-

specific; thus, it cannot be generalized in cross-cultural settings and in various situations. Some researchers also mentioned that in the case of some brands and product categories, it cannot be used; hence, they tried to establish another model (Geuens et al., 2009), although their results are less tested and less widespread. Despite the criticism, I accepted and used Aaker’s five- factor personality model to measure the perception of brand personalities as this model had been already tested in various researches and it could also be used to measure the perception of the influencers’ self-brand (Aaker, 1997; Casidy et al.,2007; Kim et al., 2008; Eisend -

Stokburger-Sauer, 2013). I also used Aaker’s (1997) brand personality dimensions to also deter

the personality of the SMIs due to the fact that even if they tend to be “everyday people”, they developed a personal brand, which could be classified into Aaker’s (1997) brand personality categories.

2.3. Self-Brand-Influencer brand personality congruence

As brands have a symbolic meaning for customers to express their image and facilitate social belongings, personality congruence is a vital part of the influencer endorsement (Shan et

al., 2019). According to Erdogan (1999), an efficient endorser has main three criterias:

credibility, attractiveness, and congruency with the brand. When searching for a suitable endorser for a brand, companies should consider the match-up hypothesis, which refers to the match between the endorser-, brand- and consumers (Choi-Rifon, 2012). Congruence between

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the self-, and brand personalities had been widely investigated, but the congruence between the third-party endorsers had been less researched, although people could be more likely to be engaged in the SM pages when they feel the congruence between the self- brand- and SMIs.

Image 2. is representing this triangle of personality congruence. Image 2.

Title: Personality congruence

Based on the match-up hypothesis, when a fit occurs between the image and personality of an endorser and the image of a brand, consumers are more likely to form positive evaluations about the message and the brand (Choi-Rifon, 2012). An incongruent brand endorser match could produce less favourable consumer responses due to the inconsistency of the misfit with consumers’ expectations. This inconsistency may lead to negative effects, such as consumer mistrust, confusion or the loss of customers which has financial consequences on firms’ financial performance (Keller, 2013). Most studies investigated only the match between the customer’s personality and the brand, but within my thesis, I focused not only at the brand- consumer match but also on the brand-endorser and the endorser-consumer congruency at the same time (Choi-Rifon, 2012).

It is important to mention that the match-up hypothesis is not only related to the user- imagery and personality congruence, it could also be related to the personality congruences and the products, which refers to the congruence between the endorser and the physical product

(Kamins, 1990). Researches on the match-up hypothesis examined that the effect of the

endorsement could be increased when the images are congruent with the endorsed products (Levi et al. 2019). Early studies tested the match-up based on the physical attractiveness of the endorser and suggested that attractive endorsers are more effective than unattractive endorsers

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when the product is related to attractiveness (Kamins, 1990; Levi et al. 2019). Even if the product-endorser-self congruity is positively tested, within my thesis, I only focused on the personality congruences.

As a conclusion from previous researches, endorsements are more effective when a personality congruence occurs between the self-brand-and endorser, rather than when there is a mismatch between them (Erdogan 1999; Choi-Rifon, 2012). For example, when a celebrity endorses a brand with a different personality, the trust effect and the perceived emotional bond of the customer could decrease, confusion could occur which could hurt the brand. Although, the positive effects of mismatches are also tested, such as advertisement with incongruent endorsers viewed for longer time, which could generate higher attitudes toward advertisements; consequently, it could be effective for the established brands, but it could also involve several risks (Törn, 2012).

2.3.1. Brand-Consumer personality congruence

A literature review by Achouri and Bouslama (2010) shows congruence between the brand personality and the consumer’s self-image, which has a crucial role in the relationship between the brand and the consumer. The congruence between the brand and consumer means the perceived similarity between the brand’s personality and the consumer’s self-image and personality (Malär et al., 2011). Consumers evaluate brand image and personality by comparing it with their own personality self-concept. When there is a match between the brand- and consumer’s personality, consumers are likely to find the brand’s image more attractive because it enables them to maintain and express their personality and strengthen their values, beliefs or sense of belonging (Luffarelli et al., 2019). This match between a brand’s personality and the consumer’s self-image is referred to as self-congruity. Consumers tend to behave in ways that are consistent with the view that how they view themselves; thus, they feel more motivated to be loyal and form positive evaluations and attitudes about a brand that strengthens their self-perceptions (Choi-Rifon, 2012). Based on these findings, the greater the match between a brand’s personality and the costumer’s personality, the greater the evaluation of the brand, which leads to higher engagement on SM, increased purchasing intension (PI), and consumer higher satisfaction compared to the low level of brand-consumer congruity (Shan et

al., 2019)

In terms of actual self-congruence, people are motivated to validate and sustain their existing self-concepts, they avoid experiences that threaten their sense of self; therefore, they

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are more likely to purchase brands, which personality are congruent with their ideal self. Although, sometimes people are more likely to be engaged with products whose personality represent the people who they want to become.

2.3.2. Brand-Influencer personality congruence

The brand-influencer congruency refers to the extent that the most relevant characteristics of the influencers’ personal brand are consistent with the associations and the personality of the brand. This congruency creates associations and links, which transfer attributes from the SMI to the brand and from the brand to the influencer (Schouten et al., 2020). The more obvious the congruency, the more the consumer will relate the marketing message, which leads to more favourable evaluation of the SMIs and brands, gives greater credibility and increased advertising effectiveness. Furthermore, a congruent brand-endorser also leads to higher online engagement (OE) and traffic to the website (Choi- Rifon, 2012).

As the celebrity endorsement in traditional marketing, IM is also including several risks. Firstly, the personality of the SMIs should be in line with the desired brand personality. If the personalities are not congruent, the target audience of brands and SMIs differ, which leads to a less successful campaign, confusion of the customers and unwanted additional associations

(Keller, 2013). Working with SMIs means giving up a certain amount of control, and it includes

further ricks such as the SMIs could have collaborations with competitors or they could change their personality or style. In order to overcome these issues, marketers should strategically evaluate and select SMIs (Keller, 2013; Shan et al., 2019).

2.3.3. Consumer-Influencer personality congruence

A fit between consumers- and the endorser’s personality could have a high effect on consumers’ response on brand messages. Due to the trust effect and the feeling of perceived similarities, consumers could adopt endorser’s attitudes and behaviours and rely on their opinions and recommendations. The definition of homophily could be used to explain this concept, which means ‘’a tendency for friendships to form between those who are alike in some designated respect’’ (Turner, 1993, p. 444). Based on this notion, to enhance their self-concept consumers confirm and accept the attitudes and opinion of endorsers when the endorser’s personality is perceived to be congruent with their own personality, so customers are perceived to be more persuasive if the personality congruence occurs. Choi and Rifon (2012) confirmed

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that the congruence of self-image and endorser’s image in celebrity endorsements has a significant impact on consumer behaviour. If consumers perceive higher self-congruity, they could respond in a more positive way toward the endorsed brand and the advertisement which leads to higher purchase intention. In sum, consumer-influencer personality congruence, the similarity between the personality of SMIs and consumers, leads to a positive impact on brand attitude, brand commitment, and behavioural intentions (Shan et al., 2019).

2.4. Self-congruity

The self-concept could be defined as an individual’s thoughts and feelings regarding himself or herself as an object (Sirgy, 1982). Consumers tend to express themselves through their brand choice as products do not just include functional characteristics, they also include an image or personality. Therefore, consumers have a tendency to use products to express their personality; thus, they have a preference for products that personalities are similar to their self- concept (Sirgy, 1982).

Self-concept also includes self-image which refers to the extent how people see themselves. Self-congruity is also called the self-image-product image congruity as it creates a link between the self-image of a consumer and the brand image. According to Keller (1998), brand image means “the set of associations linked to the brand that consumers hold in memory”

(Keller, 1993, pg.2). Based on the complex structure self-concept, we could distinguish between

several dimensions of self-congruity, which could be the following: social self-congruity; ideal social self-congruence, nostalgic self-congruence, expected self-congruence, actual self- congruence, and ideal self-congruence (Sirgy, 1982; Malär et al., 2011). Although within my thesis I focused only on the ideal, - and actual self-congruence. As Aaker (1997) described (pg

348): ‘’the greater the congruity between the human characteristics that consistently and

distinctively describe an individual's actual or ideal self and those that describe a brand, the greater the preference for the brand.”

2.4.1. Actual self-personality congruence

Actual self-congruence is based on self-verification theory (Swann, 1983), when consumers search for experiences and products that verify and validate their self-concept. The actual self and personality are based on the perception of the way a person sees herself/himself or her/his personal identity (“Who I am?” and “What do I think I am now?”). Actual self-

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congruity is the congruence between the actual self of a consumer and the brand personality (“the brand personality is like who I am right now”) (Malär et al., 2011).

The reason behind why people have a tendency to prefer brands that have a similar brand personality than theirs is the self-consistency. Self-consistency means that people have a tendency to feel uncomfortable if they act or make purchases that are not in line with their true self, their values and perceived worth as a human being. (Sirgy et al., 2014). Therefore, customers have the motivation to behave consistently with their actual view of themselves to reduce stress and frustration which could occur different ways (Sirgy et al., 2014).

The Unilever’s Dove success “Campaign for Real Beauty” endorsement line used models with “average appearance” and different body shapes; therefore, they used endorsers whose image is closer to the majority of the customers’ actual self-concept, which turned out to be a successful campaign (Keller, 2013). Furthermore, lately, several companies are collaborating with endorsers whose personality could be closer to their customer’s actual personality in order to get their sympathy and create a stronger emotional bond with them.

2.4.2. Ideal self-personality congruence

The ideal self is influenced by imagined ideals and goals related to what a person would like to be; thus, ideal self-congruity is the congruence between the ideal self of a consumer and the brand personality (“the brand personality is exactly like who I would like to be in the future”) (Malär et al., 2011).

The reason why people have a tendency to prefer brands that have a similar brand image and brand personality than theirs is self-esteem, which means “the tendency to seek experiences that enhance self-concept” (Sirgy, 1982, p. 287). Customers have a tendency to buy brands, which have similar image and personality to their ideal self, which helps them to make them feel good about themselves by bringing them closer to their ideas. (Sirgy et al., 2014). Behind the preference toward the ideal self-congruence, the self-enhancement theory also occurs, which refers to the extent that people have the motivation to increase the feelings of personal worth.

Fashion companies still use aspirational branding and collaborate with celebrities with an appealing look and idealised personalities to reach the perception that their product could make customers closer to their ideal self (Choi-Rifon, 2012). Although, due to the critics that fashion companies received regarding the negative impact on women’s self-image caused by their endorsements, and seeing the success of the collaborations with influencers closer to

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customers’ actual self, some of the brands shifted to focus on the actual self-congruences presentation over the ideal self-congruence presentation or use a mixed approach.

2.5. Online engagement and purchasing intension

Engagement in the SM sites means the intensity of a wide range of experiences and behaviours that viewers have with a brand. Hollebeek (2011, p. 6) describes consumer-brand engagement as a multidimensional construct, which means “the level of a customer's motivational, brand-related and context-dependent state of mind characterized by specific levels of cognitive, emotional and behavioural activity in brand interactions”. Cognitive engagement means the consumers’ awareness and general interest towards the brand on Instagram (IG) and it may involve activities such as viewing content or clicking to the website

(Hollebeek, 2011). Emotional engagement refers to how brand-related content on Instagram

makes the customers feel about the brand and builds a favourable or less favourable attitude towards that brand. Behavioural engagement is the construct beyond PI and resulted from motivational drivers, in other words, it means the customer's behavioural willingness toward an object or brand to purchase (Yoong- Lian, 2019). Behavioural engagement could also lead to several activities such as the willingness of the customers to write reviews, help others by sharing information or spread word-of-mouth (WOM) which could also have an impact on firms’ financial performance. During the engagement with the SM pages, customers could form both three types of engagement while; thus, they could create a long-term emotional relationship with the brand due to their increased motivation to process information (Hollebeek,

2011). Within my research, I focused on and investigated the behavioural engagement.

Engagement in a digital environment involves mental- and physical dimensions. During the previous years, numerous measurements and SM listener programmes have been proposed to measure customer’ engagement and the customer experience in the online context on Instagram. On Instagram, engagement refers to the metrics that underline how frequently the audience interacts with the branded content (Voorveld et al., 2018). This interaction could mean mainly likes, comments, shares, re-posts, follows and website-clicks taken by visitors; thus, measuring engagement could be an excellent tool to deter the success of the IM.

Engagement on SM has a huge impact on the consumer’s decision-making process and purchase intention. Purchase intention relates to the behaviour, perceptions and attitudes of consumers toward a brand, product or service. Purchase intentions could be viewed as a predictor of future purchases, which is the tendency of consumers that they have willingness to

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buy a product in the near future, consequently, it is strongly related to potential sales. (Amatulli–

Guido, 2011; Keller 2013) Purchase intention is one of the most reliable factors that build the

connection between the consumer’s interest and their actual purchase (Prenticea et al., 2019). Several researchers (Şahin – Şahin, 2017; Prenticea et al., 2019) are reported that there is a significant impact of brand personality congruence on OE as it strengthens the self-image of the customers and facilitates the scene of belongings. Furthermore, the extent of the SMIs and their personal brands’ personality could also have a meaningful impact on online engagement and on purchasing behaviour through their content (Prenticea et al., 2019). The impact of OE on PI also has been positively tested (Dhar-Kumar, 2014; Şahin – Şahin, 2017,

Prenticea et al., 2019), although the extent of them in the industry-specific context has been

less investigated, and the three types of congruity’s impact had been less researched as physical engagement on the SM content does not always lead to purchasing intention.

2.6. Fashion companies

Fashion companies have unique characteristics as they are operating in a financially sensitive market where reputation and rapid responsiveness is crucial. Fashion is a cyclical phenomenon based on the adoption of consumers; therefore, fashion products have a relatively short life cycle, which is sometimes only one season (Nurcahyo et al., 2018). Based on these fact fashion companies have to respond to the market- and customer needs changes quickly and adopt the “speed market” approach if they want to be alive (Bhardwaj – Fairhurst, 2010). Companies in the fashion industry are facing fierce competition with bigger corporations, and their business success is also influenced by various factors. These factors could be cultural differences, copyrights, environmental awareness, the trickle-down effect and the importance of the visual representation.

I chose fashion start-up companies as suitable to investigate within my thesis due to the following reasons: (1) purchases within this industry is mainly characterised by the congruences between the brands and customers; (2) fashion start-ups could offer unique and personalised, not mass-produced products for their customers which could be used for personality expression; (3) in the fashion industry the largest buying force is perceived from millennials who are also the biggest users of social media and Instagram (Azevedo – Farhangmehr, 2005); (3) visual presentation has a prominent role within this category; therefore Instagram is a suitable platform for companies within the industry to build a brand; (4) start-ups within the industry tend to have Instagram page due to the fact this platform allows a possibility for entrepreneurs to reach more

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people in a relatively low cost and start-up companies tend to have limited financial resources; (5) start-up fashion companies tend to have collaborations with influencers and not with celebrities and models; (6) within this sector, start-up companies has a high failure rate; therefore, by the result of my results I could help fashion entrepreneurs to improve their performance.

The most important reason why I chose the category of fashion start-ups to investigate was that fashion start-ups’ products are often used as self-expression; due to the fact that the majority of the fashion non-high-street brands offer innovative or unique products instead of luxurious products taking the congruence between brand personalities and customer personalities into account (Bhardwaj – Fairhurst, 2010). As fashion products tend to be high- involvement, hedonic products as fashion brands have a symbolic meaning for customers to express their personality, their actual-, or ideal self and facilitate social belongings. Based on this fact, the personality congruence between brand-consumer- and endorser should have a prominent role in their marketing activities. According to the match-up hypothesis, which refers to the match between the endorser, brand and consumers, fashion companies should search for a suitable endorser for their brand both on the offline- and online platforms (Choi-Rifon, 2012). Fashion start-ups offer non-mass produced, unique and sometimes personalised products, which could be excellently used for personality expression and this is the reason why I chose these kinds of companies to investigate. (Bhardwaj – Fairhurst, 2010).

Furthermore, the category of fashion products could be strictly linked to self-esteem, self-discrepancy, body image, which consists of the perceptions that a customer has about themselves (actual self) and their perceptions of what their desires to be (ideal self). The perception of body size and shape is closely linked to cultural ideals, but this study only focuses on the perception of Western-European women (Ridgway et al., 2017). In fact, researchers have found that ‘‘women are less satisfied with their physical appearance after viewing ideal images in the media’’ (Jung et al., 2001, p. 173), which could have a significant impact on their purchasing behaviour.

2.7. Conceptual model

Merhabian and Russell (1974) lunched the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model,

which reflect people’s affective and cognitive reactions that influence their behaviour and shaped by the brand-related stimulus. Consumers’ cognitions and emotions influence their behaviours. Based on the previous researches, in the S-O-R model we can assume that the

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stimulus is the perceived actual-, and ideal personality congruence between the personality of costumer-brand-influencer on Instagram, which leads to online brand engagement as an organism and reaction for the stimulus. As a response to the organism, PI could be developed

(Yoong- Lian, 2019).

Based on the literature review, the following conceptual model has been developed which is presented on Image 3. The formalised conceptual framework shows a visualisation of the relatedness of the actual self-congruence between the personality of customer-brand- and influencer and the ideal self-congruence between the personality of customer-brand- and influencer. The fit between these antecedents leads to OE which leads to PI. Although, the difference between the extent of the ideal-, and actual personality congruence on the OE and the impact of the OE was researched and presented in the second part of my thesis.

Image 3.

Title: Conceptual model Source: Own edition, date: date: 20.03.2020 3. Methodology

3.1. My Jewellery brands

The company was founded in 2011, in den-Bosch, in The Netherlands by Sharon Hilgers with the mission to make women and girls throughout the Netherlands extremely happy with the best jewellery, clothing and accessories. The company started with its jewellery label and has grown into a leading e-commerce company within the fashion- and lifestyle industry. During the years the brand expanded its portfolio and they offer various clothes, accessories and interior products also. In 2020, they have stores 13, more than 400 partner stores with nearly 200 employees and a loyal fan base. With the increasing number of boutiques in the

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Netherlands, their webshop and SM pages, they host thousands of visitors every day. The brand offers competitive prices, rapidly changing collections and high-quality items at competitive prices to ensure growing popularity and a loyal customer base. (My Jewellery, 2020).

The brand is active on the SM, they have Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Instagram account as well. The company has numerous collaborations with micro, - and macro-influencers across The Netherlands, and they are very active on every SM platform. On Instagram at 2020 they have 380.000 followers. The company tends to re-post the influencer’s photos on their page and allow them to have “takeovers” within their stories. I chose this company to present the personality congruences on the level of actual-, and ideal self, due to the company’s quick business success, their rapid growth and due to the fact that they are actively engaged in collaborations with influencers and not with celebrities. Even if the company is relatively smaller and not operating internationally, I found the My Jewellery (MJ) brand suitable to investigate as they do have enough brand awareness across the country and their products are not mass-produced; thus, their products could be used for self-expression.

3.2. Methodology structure

In this section, the methodology used for this thesis is outlined. Within my thesis two basic methods of marketing research have been applied, the secondary- and the primer research. During my secondary research, I collected and analysed the literature published by other researchers. Primary research is a type of marketing research in which a researcher seeks to obtain unknown, unpublished data to solve that particular research problem (Malhotra-Simon,

2008). Within my thesis, a quantitative and qualitative approach was taken as primary research

technics.

This study aimed to investigate the possible impact of the actual-, and ideal- brand- customer-influencer personality congruence and its impact on the OE on Instagram and purchasing behaviour of the customers. Within my thesis, I conduct qualitative researches as primary research technic. To answer my research question, to identify the underlying dimensions and feelings behind the phenomenon of personality congruences and to have a deep understanding of personality congruences and its impact, I conducted qualitative interviews.

Furthermore, I also had quantitative research with the purpose to support the finding of my qualitative research and increase the validity and reliability of my thesis. The aim of my survey research was to determine the perceived personality congruences on the level of actual- and ideal personality congruence and its possible impact. Due to the fact that surveys are less

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suitable to find out the underlying personal opinions and feelings, this part of my research had secondary importance, mainly confirmatory purposes to increase the validity and reliability of my research. Although, surveys were excellent tools to find the preferences toward actual- and ideal self-presentation and support my previous findings. Within my survey, I asked similar questions than within my interviews. To reach my research goals, statistical approaches were required to explorer the relationships between the variables; therefore, various statistical methods had been conducted. Both of my quantitative- and qualitative researches were based on pre-tests to decrease the possible biases in my data collection.

3.3. Reliability and Validity

Reliability and validity could be conceptualized as the trustworthiness of your research. Validity is related to the extent that the study is free from any systematic error (Hair, 2010). As a quality requirement of research reliability, it shows that research is error-free. Reliability refers to the extent that variables are consistent with what they are intended to measure (Hair,

2010). It could be improved by standardizing the way of the data collection, but as I used semi-

structured interviews as qualitative research; therefore, standardization is difficult to achieve. Although, by properly explaining the questions and definitions during the interviews I tried to limit misunderstanding and possible biases. Furthermore, consistency in the analysis is important to ensure reliability; thus, all interviews were recorded and transcribed to reduce mistakes. On the other hand, to achieve higher validity, I used literature analysis in parallel with the interviews. In order to increase the validity and reliability of my research. Based on the results of the interviews I also conducted qualitative research, although the distribution of my dataset was not normally distributed, which at some extent decreased the validity of this part of my research.

3.4. Research Ethics

To maintain research ethics, I followed the APA ethic forms and ethical treatments during my researches. To support ethical treatment and maintain privacy and confidentiality, before the beginning of the interviews and surveys, I informed the interviewees and the respondent that the participation is anonymous, their name and personal data will not be asked and used. I informed the participants about the goal of the study, the length of it and asked permission to tape-record the interviews, in order to get all the details but at the same carry on

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an attentive conversation with them. I also informed them that in case of need, I could delete any data and they could withdraw their participation even after the study was conducted (APA,

2017).

3.5. Pre-test

I conducted a pre-test with six people in order to increase the validity and reliability of my research. The aim of the pre-test was the selection of possible influencers whose personality could be closer to the actual- and ideal self of the majority of people and also congruent with the brand. I felt the necessity of the pre-test in order to create a stimulus; thus, the main purpose of it to select photos, which could be used in the later stages of my research. Without a pre-test, to create a stimuli I would selected photos of the influencers close to my actual-, and ideal personality, which could be led to biased results. The selection and the usage of the photos – to have a stimulus - were also required as without giving an example about influencers whose personality could be closer to respondents’ actual-, and ideal personality, it could lead a confusion of the respondents, as in general most people are not familiar with the required branding concepts. Without this test, with the wrong example of influencers, people could have difficulty to imagine the presentation of their actual and ideal selves through influencers. Furthermore, due to the pre-test, I can increase the face- and content validity of my research, not to mention the practical consideration of it.

The pre-test was conducted via Skype with six women (N=6) between the age of nineteen and twenty-four. Each interview took approximately 1 minutes. It was only one criterion to participate in the research, participants had to follow the brand on Instagram; therefore, I could assume that they are familiar with the brand and a certain level of personality congruence occurs between them and the brand. Firstly, I asked my friends to participate in, who follow the brand and asked them to contact me with their friends who also follow the brand on Instagram; thus, I was using the snow-balling technic. The interview had five main questions with the aim to deter which influencers’ personality could fit the brand and to the participants. When we started the interview, I sent the participants a document with the photos of the influencers. The questions asked during the pre-test could be found in Appendix 1., the document used in the pre-test interviews could be found in Appendix 2.

The first page of the document included the current photos of the MJ brand influencers, I saved the photos from the Instagram page of the brand. The second page of the document included six possible influencers whose personality could be congruent with the brand and the

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actual self of people based on my judgement. I saved these photos from the Instagram page of the “Hollister Co.” and “Triumph” as both of the brands’ influencers’ and models’ personality could be closer to the actual self of people. The third page of the document included six fashion and lifestyle influencers’ photos whose personality could be a match to the MJ brand personality and to the ideal personality of the MJ brand’s customers. I saved the first three photos from the Instagram page of the “FashionNova” as the brand is famous for their influencer marketing campaigns, and they mainly use influencers whose personality could be closer to the ideal personality of the people. The other three of the influencers’ photos were selected based on my individual search.

Firstly, I described the definition of brand personalities and asked the interviewed people to describe the MJ’s brand person if it would come alive as a person, in order to make them closer to the brand and its personality. Every participant seen the brand as a “young

woman”, who is “fashionable”, “friendly”, a person who has a lot of friends. Some participants

indicated that the brand person “likes to be in the centre of attention”, could be “kind” and “clever”.

Secondly, I asked them to open the document with the photos of influencers. I asked them to think about the personality of the brand, and whether do they think that personality- wise they are fitting to the brand and current influencers. Most participants agreed that the current influencers of the brand are “beautiful”, based on their appearance they fit the brand and their personality could also be a match. Participants indicated that the influencers seem “friendly” and “popular” but some people also mentioned that their photo is “fake”; hence, they had the perception that their photos were “staged”, which gave the perception that the personality of the girls is “less natural”.

Thirdly, I described the concept of the actual-, and ideal self for the participants and asked them to indicate that the personality of the influencers is closer to their actual- or ideal self. Four of the participants indicated that the personality of the current influencers is closer to their ideal self:

“I think she is closer to my ideal personality because she is kind of like popular, has lots of friends and trendy. I am a less trendy girl and I’m not that popular also, so I guess she is more like my ideal self.” /Respondent 4/

Fourthly, I asked the participants to go to the second page of the document and asked them to choose three influencers out of six, whose personality could be close to the personality of the brand and their actual personality. Most people chose the second influencer because her personality was found to be “natural”, “friendly” and “cheerful” and the sixth influencer’

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personality could also be congruent with the brand due to the same reasons. Some people chose the third influencer because she seems the most “natural” and more “everyday people” who could be also “shy” as she is “less skinny” than the other influencers. They found that the first girl’s style as a misfit for the brand, the fourth woman found to be “older” and “more

mature” than the brand could be, and the fifth SMI found to be shyer than the brand is.

Finally, I asked the participants to go to the second page of the document and chose three of the influencers from the page, whose personality could be a match for both to the brand and to their own ideal personality. Most of the participants chose the fifth woman as they found this influencer “fashion-forward”, “successful” and “hardworking” just like the brand and just as the person they would like to be. Most of the participants found the third influencer’s personality to be congruent with theirs and the brand as they found this influencer to be a “determined” person with an “excellent” appearance. Half of the participants, chose the fourth influencer to be congruent with them and with the brand personality-wise because they indicated that one day, they would like to be a mother, and that influencer seems to be “caring” and “family-orientated”. The other influencers were not chosen frequently as they perceived to be “more like a model, not an influencer” with “fake” and “cold personality”.

As a conclusion of the pre-test, I got the first insight that most people could see the brand as a friendly, clever and kind woman. Even if it is a small number to make a conclusion, four participants indicated that the current influencers are closer to their ideal self, and they were talking about the naturality; consequently, at this stage, I could assume that for most people, the current influencers of the brand are closer to their ideal self. The most significant result of my pre-test is that I could select three-three photos of influencers whose personality could be closed to the majority of people’s actual- and ideal self. Based on the choice of the six participants, I selected the second, the third, and the sixth influencer on the second page of the experiment document whose personality could be closer to the brand and to the actual self of the people. For the ideal personality congruence, I chose the third, the fourth, and the fifth influencer based on the judgement of the participants. These selected photos by the interviewees of the pre-test were used during the later stages of my researches. During both of my qualitative- and quantitative research I used the selected photos as a stimulus to give an example of the respondents for influencers whose personality could be closer to their actual- and ideal selves.

Furthermore, by using the selected photos during the pre-test stage a pre-test had been also done in case of the surveys with five Master’s students at Radboud University in order to test if the structure of the survey is correct and the questions are understandable. I received

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positive feedback about the setup of the survey; therefore, I was able to continue my researches. These surveys were excluded from the analysis.

4. Qualitative research

4.1. Data collection method

Interviews had been conducted with 12 participants (N=12). There were two requirements from the interviewees to participate in the research. One of them was that participants had to follow the MJ brand on Instagram; thus, in that case I could assume that they are familiar with the brand and a certain level of personality congruence occurs. Secondly, they were not participating in the pre-test.

Firstly, I asked my friends to participate in who follow the brand and asked them to contact me with their friend who also follows the brand; thus, I was using the snow-balling technic again. All of the participants were women between the age of 20 and 27 with a different nationality. The distribution of respondents by background variables (N = 12) could be found in Appendix 4. The interviews were conducted via Skype, and the average length of them was 44 minutes.

4.2. Methodology of the interviews

An in-depth interview is a data collection process of primary researches, a research opportunity in which tangible progress is made and which should be designed to engage in dialogue, to examine and discover underlying views, emotions, views, and attitudes of the person interviewed (Malhotra-Simon, 2008).

The interviews were intended to clarify certain relations between personality congruences between the MJ brand, the influencers and respondents at the level of actual- and ideal personality and its impact on Instagram engagement on PI. In order to get a deep insight into the personality congruences and find out unique perceptions and opinions, this is the most significant part of my research as I was able to discover the underlying emotions, reasons and opinions beyond the studied concepts.

Due to the fact that the personality congruences had been mainly investigated between only two antecedents of my personality congruence triangle, mostly only in the context of brand-self and endorser-self personality fit - where most of the studies considered the endorsers as celebrities - I had to use multiple studies to correctly answer my research question.

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Furthermore, most of the studies before investigated the personality congruences on only one level, without separating to congruence to actual -and ideal levels, which led me to design my own research method. The questions during my interviews were based on the surveys and questions used by former researches such as Malär et al., 2011, Maehle et al., 2011, Prenticea, et al., 2019 and Valentini et al., 2018. Appendix 3. Includes a table which shows the source of

the questions. As I faced with the previously mentioned difficulties, I had to combine and

reframe several questions and design an interview workflow which measures the personality congruences correctly on both actual- and ideal level. The questions from Malär et al., 2011 regarding the personality congruences were directly adopted, although the other ones were reframed. In case of the interviews, I used open-ended questions, therefore the scales were not adopted from previous researches.

After the demographical questions, the interviews had 23 open-ended questions, which could be classified into three main categories, which are the following:

1. The personality of the brand

2. The personality of the current influencers and current PI

3. The personality of the influencers whose personality is close to the actual/ideal self and its possible impact on PI based on the stimuli

The first section, the personality of the brand was measured by five items. Within these items and questions, respondents indicated the perceived personality congruence between themselves and the brand on the actual- or ideal level. The second dimension, the personality of the current influencers was measured by five items on the actual- or ideal level. The third section of the interview measured the opposite personality level of other influencers than the current ones of the brand. This section included another five items to measure the personality congruence. The measurement of the OE and PI was integrated into the second and third section. I measured the current OE and PI with three-three items, and I measured the perceived changes with another set of influencers with another item. Furthermore, the last two questions were related to both OE and PI. The list of the questions is attached to Appendix 3, where the operationalisation is presented, questions are classified into dimensions and the used references are also included.

Higher number of questions were required, because during the pre-test stage respondents indicated that it was hard to think about imagined persons’ personalities; therefore, with lower number of questions I may would not get informative data out of the interviews. During the interviews, we were using two documents. The first document had three pages, on the first page, they could see the definition of the brand personalities and Aaker’s (1997) 5

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personality traits with some adjectives valid to the brand. The second page of the document included a circle to measure how close the respondents feel the personality of the brand and influencers for themselves. I asked the respondents to place a pink point to the place within the circle, based on their perception on how close do they feel the personality of the brand from theirs. Using a circle to measure the perceived closeness of objects and people if common in the psychological and customer relationship studies (Walker-Markly, 1991; Ely et al, 1991;

Schimidt- Hollensen, 2006); thus, I used the circle method to measure the perceived personality

similarities.

During the later stages of the interviews, respondents were asked to use the page including the circle and place point to the circle, based on their perception about the closeness and similarity of the first and the second set of influencers’ personalities. The third page of the document includes three photos of the current influencers of the MJ brand. When participants indicated that the current influencers of the brand were close to their actual self, I sent them a document, which included the photo of the influencers, whose personality could be closer to ideal personality. If the respondents indicated that the current set of influencers of the brand are closer to their ideal self, I sent them the document including the three photos of the influencers who could be the representation of their actual personalities. I felt the necessity to have a stimulus for both the actual and ideal self as for people who are not familiar with the topic of brand personalities, they could have a difficulty to imagine an influencer whose personality could be the presentation of their actual and ideal selves and imagine the possible changes on their engagement and PI without a visual presentation. Furthermore, I asked the respondents to place a point within the circle based on their perception of how close they feel the personality of the influencers from their actual-, and ideal-personality. The documents used during the interviews could be found at Appendix4.

4.3. Analysis of the interviews

After conducting the interviews and making the transcription of the records (transcript of the interviews could be found from Appendix 6. to Appendix 17.), the coding of the data was done by Atlas.ti 8 and Microsoft World. Concept-drive coding is a process of identifying a massage in the data, identifying concepts and finding relations between the underlying structures. During the analysis of the interview, various codes had been created such as personality similarities/dissimilarities, positive impact on OE or PI. The result of the analysed interviews is discussed in the results sections. As I used a 6-layer circle during the interviews,