Loyal Now, but Not Forever! A Study of Narcissism and Male Consumer–Brand Relationships

Two prominent areas of research to emerge in recent years are consumer relationships with brands and narcissism in society. Whilst each of these research streams has contributed valuable insights on contemporary consumer behavior, there has not yet been an in-depth comparative study of the relations that narcissists and non-narcissists have with products and brands, a gap that this study seeks to address. In the same vein as Fournier (1998), an idiographic qualitative study was devised to investigate whether there are consistent differences in orientation to (a) people and (b) brands between men scoring high and low on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. The findings show the agentic nature of the narcissist, as compared to the communal orientation of the non-narcissist, in dealing with both people and brands. Furthermore, the findings offer evidence of grandiose and fragile variants of narcissism.