Våga Vara Annorlunda?: En uppsats om hur produktengagemang och motivation påverkar inkongruent marknadskommunikation

Sammanfattning: To be seen is essential. Presently, the marketing of different well-known brands within the same product category is done with little variation. To marketing professionals, this creates an opportunity to market products in an unexpected way. The use of incongruent market communication and by creating a discrepancy between a well-known brand’s advertisement and brand scheme, which is already established in customers’ minds, is one way to be different. Two factors that influence how consumers understand incongruent communication are involvement and motivation. This study investigates how consumers react to incongruent communication regarding products with high and low involvement as well as with positive and negative motivation. The study was carried out by means of an experiment involving eight chosen brands. The respondents reported their reactions to either a congruent or incongruent market communication related to one of the eight brands. The brands chosen were representative of the different levels of involvement and motivation. The results show both positive and negative effects when using incongruent market communication. For all types of products, the results show tendencies of a more sophisticated processing of the incongruent advertisement, compared to the congruent. For brands characterized by negative motivation, the results indicate a difficulty for incongruent advertisement to create credibility, especially for products linked to high risk. The insights gathered from this study have strategic implications with regard to how marketing professionals may use incongruent market communication for different types of products.