A Lexical Study of Comparisons with Typical Brand Users of Goods

The article proposes a methodological framework of psycholexical studies, derived from personality theory, as a reliable base for the extraction of universal dimensions of self-image congruence. The aim of our study was to explore the psycholexical structure of a lexicon of comparisons made by Polish consumers of goods when comparing themselves to typical brand users of particular goods. The consumer lexicon was compiled as a result of 586 individual interviews with respondents aged 13 to 82 (M = 36,6; SD = 16,9), 51.8% of whom were females. The study involved 294 brands representing 29 categories of goods. The lexicon of 17,075 attributes of typical brand users was classified by 13 judges according to the classification system adopted from German lexical studies. Judicial decisions underwent psychometric verification in the aspect of their validity and internal reliability; they were found satisfactory. The results of judicial classifications were demonstrated in the aspect of desirable, similar, and undesirable attributes in the consumers’ self-concept, and discussed with reference to the structure of a person-descriptive lexicon in the Polish language. The results showed that consumers observe both positive and negative attributes in typical brand users and over a half of all the attributes of consumers are personality descriptors. The study allowed us to extract a high-frequency list of consumer descriptors that can be applied in quantitative self-image congruence research