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The purpose of this paper is to examine how brand anthropomorphism (BA), consumer–brand engagement (CBE), consumer skepticism and brand prestige influence consumer–brand identification (CBI).

The proposed theoretical model is tested using structural equation modelling approach on the data gathered from 464 consumers.

The paper shows that being more engaged in consumer–brand interactions and perceiving a brand as more humanlike and prestigious increases consumer’s identification with product brands. On the other hand, consumer skepticism towards advertising only slightly decreases their identification. CBI is shown to have a strong positive influence on brand loyalty.

The study restricts itself to those brands that consumers know well and are somehow close to them. It might prove worthwhile to replicate the study to broaden the inferences beyond the criteria used in this study.

To strengthen consumers’ identification with their brands, organisations should maintain a focus on interactions with their target consumers. Specifically, companies should expose their human-like character and engage consumers in company’s offerings. Also, companies should take care for keeping their competitive edge to be perceived as more prestigious than the competition.

While previous papers studying drivers of CBI focused mainly on brand associations that help satisfy one of consumer’s self-definitional need, this paper aims to define the drivers of CBI by examining the origins of consumer’s interactions with brands. The paper proposes CBE and BA as two vital antecedents of CBI.

This paper aims to examine relationships between consumer-brand identification (CBI), brand prestige (BP), brand anthropomorphism (BA) and consumers’ active engagement in brand activities on social media in corporate brand settings.

Data collected with an online survey on a sample randomly drawn from an online panel of consumers were used to test the proposed theoretical model.

Anthropomorphism and prestige of corporate brands were found to positively influence consumer-brand identification. Also, CBI positively affects consumers’ active engagement and fully mediates the effect of BP and BA on consumers-brand engagement (CBE) with corporate brands.

Further research in other markets and on a broader set of corporate brands would additionally validate results and enable comparisons of impacts among different brand categories. The data were gathered in one country, so further research in other markets would additionally validate results of this study.

Chief executives responsible for corporate brand management are provided with some insights on how appropriate corporate brand identity management can strengthen CBI and stimulate CBE on social media.

This paper provides some novel insights into the research on consumer-brand identification. It is the first study (to the authors’ knowledge) that empirically supports the positive influence of brand anthropomorphism on CBI in corporate brand settings. It also contributes to the clarification of previously inconsistent results of the influence of BP on CBI. By showing that consumers’ identification with a corporate brand plays a vital role in increasing consumers’ active engagement on social media, the study contributes to the relatively sparse body of research on CBE.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the impacts of brand personality and functional congruity on various components of brand loyalty (i.e. cognitive, affective, and conative) by examining the moderating role of gender.

The proposed model is examined by considering car as a product brand stimulus. Using a self-structured questionnaire, 263 usable responses are considered for data analysis by applying the structural equation modelling method.

The findings indicate that all hypotheses on the relationships between brand personality, functional congruity, and stages of brand loyalty are supported except for the relationship between brand personality and conative loyalty, whereby brand personality indirectly have impacts on conative brand loyalty via functional congruity. The outcome of the multi-group analysis shows that the impact of brand personality and functional congruity on cognitive, affective, and conative brand loyalty varies across gender groups.

The results indicate that if marketing managers are willing to create cognitive, affective as well as conative brand loyalty among consumers, they ought to tally their consumers’ purchasing and evaluation criteria with the functional and symbolic attributes. If the target consumers were motivated to purchase the product based on the symbolic attributes (as preferred by females in the present study), more attention should be focussed on communicating and delivering the symbolic attributes during their marketing campaign; on the other hand, if the consumers were inclined to buy product based on the utilitarian functions (as preferred by males in the current study), more emphasis should be placed on the functional values and attributes.

This study is the first to utilise self-congruity and the elaboration likelihood model to explain the influence of brand personality and functional congruity on each component of brand loyalty within the automobile industry’s context. This study on the moderating role of gender shows that the effect of brand personality and functional congruity is different across gender groups. The findings can help marketers to design an effective brand positioning and marketing strategies in order to stay competitive.