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BRAND RELATIONSHIPS, EMOTIONS, AND THE SELF
Pride of Ownership: An Identity-Based Model
AARON AHUVIA, NITIKA GARG, RAJEEV BATRA, BRENT MCFERRAN,
AND PABLO BRICE LAMBERT DE DIESBACH
ABSTRACT Pride of ownership is explored in a series of depth interviews utilizing a new “surfacing”methodology.
Pride of ownership is linked to a brand’s or product’s ability to help consumers construct five major aspects of identity:
cultivating personal taste, achieving nondependence and adulthood, achieving social status, building close relationships,
and connecting to groups. These five implicit identity goals are ordered based on the extent to which each aspect of iden-
tity is part of the independent self (i.e., personal taste) or the interdependent self (i.e., social roles and connecting to
groups). We introduce the terms independent pride and interdependent pride to refer to pride that helps construct the
independent and interdependent aspects of the self, respectively. In addition, this research uncovers several ways that
consumer’s pride of ownership changes over time. Conclusions are drawn for further theory-building and for managers.
In 2009, Tata Motors launched “the world’s cheapest car”in
India, priced at a mere US$2,500. It was aimed at revolu-
tionizing how millions of Indians traveled—often carrying
entire families dangerously on two-wheeler scooters and
motorcycles—by making safer, more comfortable travel af-
fordable. Its cost-reducing design and manufacturing won
plaudits and awards from all over the world (Chattopa-
dhyay, Batra, and Ozsomer 2012, 68). Initial sales were
high, but plummeted shortly thereafter for a variety of rea-
sons—including its positioning as the world’s cheapest car.
“That was a mistake,”said Tata Motors’Chairman Ratan
Tata, “it gave the car a stigma.”Apparently, even for poor
Indians, buying “the world’s cheapest car”did not provide
the “pride of ownership”they were looking for.
While the pride felt for luxury products has received at-
tention (e.g., McFerran, Aquino, and Tracy 2014), such
pride of ownership—despite its obvious centrality to
consumer-brand relationships—is conspicuously absent from
the standard lists of consumption or advertising emotions
(e.g., Batra and Ray 1986; Richins 1997), and thus cries
out for more research.
Below, we report our findings from a qualitative, explor-
atory investigation into pride of ownership, using a new
“surfacing”methodology. Building on prior work, we ex-
plore this key research question: Based upon consumers’
lived experiences of pride of ownership, what are its fea-
tures, antecedents, and consequences? We first provide a
brief review of relevant literature and a description of our
qualitative “surfacing”methodology. We then present our
results, discussing five aspects of identity-building that are
strongly linked to pride of ownership. These serve as im-
plicit identity goals, in that the more each of these is achieved,
the stronger the consumer’s feelings of pride. We conclude
with some implications.
BRIEF LITERATURE REVIEW
The Emotion of Pride
Generally, much of what we know about the conceptuali-
zation of pride comes from psychology (a detailed litera-
ture review with supporting references appears in app. A;
apps. A and B are available online). Culturally, pride is some-
times seen as positive (e.g., “she takes pride in her work”)and
at other times seen as negative (e.g., the “sin of pride”). This
distinction has given rise to a particularly influential current
theory: the two-facet model of pride (Tracy and Robins
2007). This model conceptualizes pride as having two facets,
authentic and hubristic. Authentic pride arises from achieve-
ments that are attributed to internal, unstable, and control-
lable factors (e.g., “I did well because I worked hard”); in
contrast, hubristic pride emerges when achievements are at-
Aaron Ahuvia (ahuvia@umich.edu), professor of marketing, University of Michigan–Dearborn, College of Business, Fairlane Center South, 19000 Hubbard
Drive, Dearborn, MI 48128-1491. Nitika Garg (n.garg@unsw.edu.au), associate professor of marketing, UNSW Business School, The University of New South
Wales, 3022 Quadrangle Building, UNSW Sydney, 2052, New South Wales, Australia. Rajeev Batra (rajeevba@umich.edu), S. S. Kresge Professor of Market-
ing, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, 701 Tappan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Brent McFerran (brent.mcferran@sfu.ca), W. J. VanDusen Asso-
ciate Professor of Marketing, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, 500 Granville Street, Vancouver, BC, V6C 1W6, Canada. Pablo Brice Lam-
bert de Diesbach (pablo.dediesbach@isg.fr), associate professor, Institut Supérieur de Gestion, 8 Rue de Lota, 75116 Paris, France, and Universityof
Salamanca, Spain.
JACR, volume 3, number 2. Published online March 5, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/697076
©2018 the Association for Consumer Research. All rights reserved. 2378-1815/2018/0302-0040$10.00
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tributed to internal, stable, and uncontrollable causes (e.g., “I
did well because I am brilliant”) (Tracy and Robins 2007;
Huang, Dong, and Mukhopadhyay 2014).
It is noteworthy that while there are important differ-
ences between the two, both facets of pride emphasize the
“self”as the focal agent responsible for an outcome (Tracy
and Robins 2007; see also Williams et al. 2018). For the cur-
rent study, it is useful to combine authentic and hubristic
pride into a single summary statement that the two-facet
model predicts that pride will increase when a person reflects
on their (a) achievements, (b) positive behaviors, or (c) positive
traits, and conversely that pride will decrease if these are
undermined. Our data show that, in the context of brands,
while these relationships do exist, there are other impor-
tant reasons as to why consumers can develop pride of own-
ership.
Pride in Consumption
For the current work, though we emphasize our findings
concerning brands, we conceptualize pride of ownership
broadly as including not only tangible objects but also intan-
gible consumption experiences the consumer has purchased
or experienced, and feels a sense of psychological ownership
over. Therefore, we use the term pride-object to refer to any-
thing respondents claimed to be proud of, including prod-
ucts, brands, possessions, consumption experiences, and
consumption activities. Given the focus of this special issue,
we highlight implications for brands.
The vast majority of prior work on pride in consumer
research (see literature review in app. A) is experimental
(although see Decrop and Derbaix [2010] for a qualitative
exception, and Kirk, Swain, and Gaskin [2015] for a concep-
tual one). In one example, Salerno, Laran, and Janiszewski
(2015) examined the effect of pride on self-regulatory be-
havior. Experimentally, this involved manipulating feel-
ings of pride (vs. control), along with other factors (e.g., self-
regulatory goals) and testing their joint effect on virtuous
choices (e.g., granola bars over M&Ms). Huang et al. (2014)
used a similar paradigm, manipulating pride (in this case, sep-
arating authentic from hubristic) and assessing uniqueness-
seeking as the dependent measure. Several other works fol-
low a similar structure, with pride examined as a momentary,
incidental (as opposed to integral) feeling induced by re-
searchers and testing its effects on subsequent consumption
decisions (though occasionally, pride is treated as a chronic
personality trait). Despite the relevance of this prior re-
search, most of it only studies some particular consequences
of momentarily induced pride. In contrast, we explore here
the multiple consequences of naturally emerging pride in
the acquisition and long-term ownership (and possible dis-
posal) of consumption objects.
The question of how pride of ownership functions within
an ongoing consumer-brand relationship
1
is therefore an
appropriate next step in building on the extant literature.
There is of course a rich literature on how consumers de-
velop relational bonds with brands, possessions, and activ-
ities (e.g., Belk 1988; Richins 1994; Fournier 1998; Escalas
and Bettman 2003, 2005; Aggarwal 2004; Kleine and Baker
2004; Ahuvia 2005; Chaplin and John 2005; Thompson,
MacInnis, and Park 2005; Chang and Chieng 2006; Batra,
Ahuvia, and Bagozzi 2012; Park, Eisengerich, and Park 2013;
Bellizza and Keinan 2014; MacInnis, Park, and Priester
2014).
2
These consumer relationships—like all relation-
ships—are a series of interactions unfolding over time.
Prior studies on pride, the majority of which are priming
experiments with situational measures, are ill-suited to fully
capture how pride of ownership functions over time within
a consumer relationship. We explore the relational aspects
of pride of ownership here, using a new qualitative method-
ology described below.
METHODOLOGY
This research was conducted using a qualitative method-
ology initiated in Ahuvia (2005), refined in Batra et al. (2012),
and now formally introduced here as a distinct process.
Surfacing Methodology
This methodology, which we call surfacing, is a variant of the
widely used long interview (McCracken 1988) and grounded
theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967) approaches. Surfacing is
designed to uncover the content and scope of scientific con-
structs, such as pride, which correspond to commonly used
everyday terms. In these cases, understanding the content
and scope of the scientific construct requires researchers
to uncover the psychological process or state that is denoted
by the focal term. In the present case, when people say they
are proud, what psychological state or process are they re-
ferring to, and what are its attributes?
Surfacing is premised on the fact that for most people,
their concept of a psychological phenomenon such as pride
1. Following common practice, we use the term “consumer-brand re-
lationship”broadly, to include not only relationships with brands per se
but also relationships with other consumption possessions (e.g., “my
car”) and consumption activities (e.g., “going out to eat”).
2. Because of space limitations, some of these references are listed in
appendix A rather than in the main text.
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exists as tacit knowledge. They have no trouble using the
word “pride”and often have a fairly nuanced notion of what
it is, but they cannot readily bring this tacit knowledge to the
surface in a way that would allow them to accurately and
completely articulate it.
To understand the logic behind the surfacing method-
ology, consider a classic example of tacit knowledge: tying
one’s shoe. Suppose someone asked you to write step-by-
step instructions for tying shoelaces. If you are like most
people, you know how to tie your shoes, yet you would
not readily be able to verbalize the process. One way to solve
this problem would be to watch yourself tie your shoes and
write down what you see yourself doing. Similarly, surfacing
interviews include questions that require respondents to
use the focal concept (in this case pride) to perform a num-
ber of mental tasks. Through introspection, respondents
watch themselves performing these tasks and describe their
mental activity to the researcher. These mental tasks in-
clude sorting pride-objects based on how much pride they
generate, comparing pride-objects to each other, projective
questions that require metaphorical thinking about pride,
and summarizing any insights the respondent gained through
the interview. The main interviews lasted 1.5–2hours.
Sorting. Prior to the main interview, respondents partici-
pated in an intake interview or written survey. Along with
getting some basic demographic information, these intake
questions asked respondents if there were any things they
were proud to own and, if so, what they were. In the intake
survey, some respondents said they were proud of things
that fell outside of the topic for this study, but in the inter-
views, we focused more narrowly on pride of ownership,
that is, pride in objects or experiences that respondents
had purchased or that had been purchased for them. Provid-
ing a list of pride-objects in the intake survey encouraged re-
spondents to think about pride of ownership and activate
relevant mental schemas prior to the main interview. When
respondents arrived at the interview, they were provided
with index cards, each listing one of the pride-objects they
had mentioned earlier. They were then asked if there were
any other pride-objects they would like to add. If so, these
were also written on index cards.
In addition to providing a list of pride-objects to be used
in the rest of the interview, this question required respon-
dents to use their tacit knowledge about pride in a fairly
simple way: to distinguish between things that they were,
or were not, proud of. Later in the interview, respondents
used their concept of pride to do a more complex sorting
task in which they placed their pride-objects into three
groups, objects for which: (1) their pride has increased over
time, (2) their pride has stayed the same over time, or
(3) their pride has decreased over time. This activity focused
on changes in pride over time and was consistent with our
interest in how pride evolves and changes over the course
of consumer-brand relationships. After each sorting task at
the interview, respondents discussed the mental process
and criteria they had just used to perform that task.
Comparing. The index cards listing the pride-objects were
divided into two stacks. The respondent was asked to take
the top card from each stack and compare them, telling the
interviewer which item they were prouder of and what they
were thinking about as they made that comparison.
Next, respondents completed two ranking tasks. In the
first of these, respondents lined up the index cards from
most proud to least proud. This ranking required a more
comprehensive series of paired comparisons between pride-
objects, similar to what they had just done. This second com-
parison task proved useful, as new information surfaced that
had not previously been attained through the paired com-
parison task.
Respondents were then asked to rerank each of the pride-
objects, this time from most loved to least loved, and ex-
plain how their thought process differed between love and
pride. Since there are many commonalities between the things
we love and the things we are proud of, this task provided
insight into the differences and similarities between these
two constructs. (Fully discussing these results is beyond the
scope of the current article.)
Metaphorical Thinking. To get respondents to engage in
imaginative thought using their concept of pride, respon-
dents were given a large group of evocative visual images.
Respondents were asked to select a few of the images that
they thought were metaphorically related to pride of owner-
ship and to discuss those perceived connections.
Summarizing. For the respondent, the surfacing questions
generated several thoughts about pride, and sometimes
useful insights as well. To be sure we had “harvested”all
of these, following the three mental tasks of sorting, com-
paring, and metaphorical thinking, respondents were then
asked if they had any other thoughts about pride that they
wanted to share, if they had learned anything new from the
interview, and how they would define pride.
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Other Interview Questions
Along with the surfacing questions, respondents were asked
background questions about their life, questions about us-
ing the pride-objects in social settings, and a projective ques-
tion in which they imagined that their pride-object was
magically transformed into an animal. The interviews also
included questions that relate to topics beyond the scope
of the current article.
Respondents
Based on their demographics as well as the intake interviews
asking what they were proud to own, 10 respondents were
selected who were proud to own various branded products.
They are identified herein by aliases. This sample size is typ-
ical of depth-interview research; it is the same as Batra et al.
(2012) and is larger than Ahuvia (2005). All respondents
were adult professionals (ages 26–47), and some were en-
rolled part or full time in MS programs in the United States
(4 interviews) or Australia (6 interviews). Respondents were
5 women and 5 men. Culturally, respondents were 2 Amer-
icans, 2 Indians studying in the US, 3 Australians, and 3 In-
dians studying in Australia. Table B1 in appendix B iden-
tifies respondents by alias and lists their pride-objects
ordered from most to least pride.
Data Analysis
All interviews were recorded and transcribed, then coded by
multiple researchers. A new code was added each time a
statement did not fit an existing code. The coding continued
until a complete analysis of all interviews produced no new
categories. These initial codes were then sorted into groups
based on face similarity and relevance to previous research.
These researchers followed the collaborative process used in
interpretive content analysis (Ahuvia 2001), hence mea-
sures of intercoder agreement were not appropriate. This
process resulted in several major themes, many of which
(but not all) are reported here.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Brand Talk
Despite asking respondents about things they had pur-
chased (or that had been purchased for them), brand names
were only occasionally mentioned in the interviews. In part,
this may be due to the fact that respondents were mostly
talking about things they already owned or used. In normal
conversation, people often say things such as “I’m thinking
of buying a Ford,”but once they own the car, they simply
refer to it as “my car.”So, it was common for respondents
to talk about all sorts of branded products they were proud
to own, without explicitly using the brand name. This com-
mon speech pattern does not imply that the brand name
was, or was not, important in the purchase decision.
Identity
Pride is deeply enmeshed with identity (Pierce et al. 2001;
Pierce 2003; Belk 2013). The important role that identity
plays in pride of ownership was noted by Vihaan when, at
the end of the interview, he realized that the things he is
most proud of are not the most expensive items, but rather
the items that are most a part of who he is (i.e., “most close
to me”).
Vihaan: Yeah. If I look at it, I see that things that I’m
more proud of are much cheaper ...than the other
ones, right? Because the property was much more
expensive, the car was more expensive, but then I
actually—the things that are very close to me,
and I’m very proud of are actually not that expen-
sive, to be honest.
Identity construction was so important to pride of own-
ership that being part of a person’s identity, in and of itself,
led to increased pride. Here, Shaurya explains that he is
prouder of his education than he is of his house, because
his education becomes a permanent part of who he is, in a
way that his house does not.
Shaurya: Education is such a thing which will stay
with me forever. ...A house is a thing maybe to-
morrow I have to do away with it. But education,
even if I tear that piece of degree [i.e., even if I tear
up my diploma], but still the knowledge which I
gain I have it with me.
Pride of Ownership, a Big Picture Model
Figure 1 depicts our overall model for pride of ownership.
The arrows depict the five major implicit identity goals that
emerged in the interviews, reflecting specific ways in which
pride of ownership is related to identity construction. These
are goals, in that achieving them increases the consumer’s
pride of ownership. They are implicit in that consumers need
not be consciously aware of them. These goals are often
complementary, and it was quite common for a pride-object
to help construct several of these aspects of identity.
Identity construction occurs with regard to both the in-
dependent and interdependent aspects of the self (Wong
and Ahuvia 1998; Markus and Kitayama 2010). The inde-
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pendent self refers to the inner private aspects of identity,
including emotions, desires, personal values, and memories.
The interdependent self refers to the outer public aspects of
identity, including social roles, titles, social relationships,
and the public persona presented to others. We introduce
the terms independent pride and interdependent pride to refer
to pride that helps construct the independent and interde-
pendent aspects of the self, respectively. An example of in-
dependent pride would be taking pride in doing something
that you personally considered to be the right thing, while
keeping your behavior private. However, a respondent,
Amit, provided an excellent explanation of interdependent
pride when he said, “You feel proud of something if in your
mind you think other people would think well of you as a re-
sult.”Independent and interdependent pride are useful the-
oretical concepts, but none of the real instances of pride
studied here were purely one or the other; all were mixtures
of these two ideal types.
As we move through each goal in figure 1 from top to bot-
tom, the focus gradually shifts from independent (e.g., per-
sonal taste) to more interdependent (e.g., connecting to
groups) aspects of identity. The process of developing and
experiencing pride of ownership occurs over time, as depicted
on the x-axis.
Goal 1: Cultivating Personal Taste. Respondents often
linked their pride of ownership to the uniqueness of the
pride-object. A close reading of the interviews showed that
the preference for unique or rare pride-objects actually stems
from two different phenomena. Here, we discuss unique
pride-objects as representations of individual taste. In the
later section on social status, we discuss unique or rare pride-
objects valued for their exclusivity. Unique or rare pride-
objects sometimes served both of these goals simultaneously.
Respondents frequently used the extent to which a pride-
object expressed their identity as a basis for judging how
proud they were to own it. Rachel talks about being proud
of her T-shirts for some entertainment brands.
Rachel: I like silly T-shirts. I’ve got T-shirts for like
dealing with Buffy and Angel, and those two shows.
And Gilmore Girls,andIdon’t know, I just like them.
I like getting to buy my own clothes, because it just
is an individual choice and it helps to express my
personality.
Rachel calls these T-shirts “silly,”implying that they are not
trophies of some great achievement; rather, they simply ex-
press her personality. Shows such as Buffy,Angel, and
Gilmore Girls are not conventional status symbols, yet pride
can still be an important part of their appeal for the right
consumer.
Buying something helps integrate it into the consumer’s
identity, but actually making or modifying something is
even more powerful in this regard (Dahl and Moreau 2007;
Ahuvia, Batra, and Bagozzi 2009; Mochon et al. 2012), with
Figure 1. How pride helps construct identity.
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the level of pride increasing with the resources (money, time,
and effort) spent on the acquisition or customization of the
object (Pierce 2003; Kirk et al. 2015). Such creative per-
sonalization and effort often also lead to feelings of self-
competence and self-efficacy (Dahl and Moreau 2007;
Thompson and Norton 2011). Despite the fact that our
questions asked specifically about things that had been
purchased, respondents sometimes mentioned items they
had made, and frequently mentioned products they had
creatively modified (which may also increase pride by mak-
ing the pride-object more of an achievement).
Cindy: I’ve renovated two of the rooms [in my home].
So, I’m proud that I got to design and choose as-
pects of the house. That’s been a very big sense
of pride for me ...it’s quite powerful when you
get to manipulate your environment to the point
that you are expressing your creativity in a practi-
cal way.
Divit: I didn’t like the way it was a simple car, so I
wanted to have a bit highlighted. So, I used some
LEDs and inside I changed with the high-sounding
systems and stuff like that. I just made it.
Goal 2: Achieving Nondependence and Adulthood. One
pervasive and striking theme in the interviews—new to
this literature—was that the pride of ownership was partic-
ularly linked to objects that signified adulthood via indepen-
dence, autonomy, and responsibility. Feelings of adulthood
were frequently connected to financial achievements:
Rachel: [My laptop is] an incredibly expensive item
and I actually managed to buy it myself. ...I guess
I kind of proved myself as a grown-up.
Generally, people were proud of things that they saw as
excellent (in quality), such as Rachel’s laptop. Yet, next, we
will see that Sarah was very proud of her first car that she
got while still in high school, even though when she bought
it, it was used and in terrible condition (and hence, as the
quote begins, would not help her “become friends with the
cheerleaders”).
Sarah: By the time I had the car it was less like “I want
to be friends with the cheerleaders”than “I want
my independence, I want to go away to college, I
want to get my own apartment.”...It was more
like: hey, I have my own independent transpor-
tation and I can do what I want. Sometimes it
would be like, wow my car is really noisy and no-
body else’s is, but I think looking back at it now,
having my own transportation and independence
was more important than having a good show-
piece.
Respondents also went out of their way to stress how
much effort and self-sacrifice they put into their pride-
objects or associated activities (cf. Pierce 2001). For in-
stance, of all the things that Rachel is proud to own, she
is most proud of her university degrees because compared
to her other pride-objects:
Rachel: It took a lot more work to get [the degrees]. ...
It took six soul-destroying years. And I’ve finally
graduated. And I decided to splurge and get them
framed after graduating. That’s really expensive,
but I did it. ...But I like them because I earned them
through blood, sweat, and tears, and actual blood on
occasion ...Idon’tknow,Iworkedreallyhardfor
them and I was proud of myself for achieving them
because there were many times when I thought,
“This is too exhausting, I can’tdoit,I’mgoingto
quit,”and then I didn’t.
Every quote about effort and sacrifice is in the context
of a notable achievement. This suggests that achievement
leads to pride, while effort and sacrifice moderate that rela-
tionship.
It could be argued that these particular findings emerge
because of the age group into which most of our respon-
dents fell. However, pride stemming from demonstrating
responsibility, autonomy, and adulthood was not limited
to objects acquired when the respondent was in his/her
teens or twenties. Here, Cindy, a 47-year-old mother of
two, talks about her pride in her home that she bought later
in life, and how her pride is derived from the adult charac-
teristics of autonomy and responsibility.
Interviewer: Now, you said ...that you feel proud of
your home because you worked for it. ...Now,
what happened as a result of that?
Cindy: I became very grown up. So, you become very
responsible and worrying about things that I’ve
never been exposed to before, like mortgages and
rights, and all those kind of—it kind of is a very dif-
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ferent aspect to how I saw it as a renter. It was like,
“Oh, that’s the owner’s problem.”But now as an
owner, it’s my problem.
Buying a home is a straightforward symbol of adulthood
and independence, but so is learning to leave one’s home.
Amit was proud of his trip to Goa in part because it was
“the first time I was traveling on my own.”Priya, another re-
spondent, discussed how she was proud of traveling with
her own money because it signified autonomy, achievement,
and personal growth toward adult capabilities.
Goal 3: Achieving Social Status. Pride-objects also help
their owners achieve hierarchical social status, often through
the display of either economic capital (i.e., wealth) or cul-
tural capital (i.e., sophistication, intelligence, and good
taste; Holt 1998). Here Divit provides an example of both
types of capital when discussing his watches:
Divit: I own Calvin Kleins, I own Lacoste, I own
Guccis ...a couple of Fossils. So, I have about
10 watches ...I feel proud because again, they
are part of my definition. ...I wear them with
pride ...towards a feeling of completeness. There
is something in that watch and that brand that has
been liked by me and many others. And that de-
fines in part that I have a good taste on one partic-
ular product or a commodity that’s there in the
market to be owned. So again, that defines my taste,
my top level, my style. ...My career is in manage-
ment. And one part of management is the way
how you dress, how you look, how you feel, and
the way you carry yourself. [Watches are] one part
of that design and that look that makes you feel
complete.
What counts as cultural capital depends on the subculture
one inhabits. Within Divit’s business culture, owning expen-
sive watches is often seen as indicating both wealth and
taste. But among high-education consumers who make cul-
tural capital their primary social asset (i.e., the people some
businesspeople refer to as “liberal elites”), a fancy watch may
be considered gauche. For them, pride of ownership is more
likely to be found in art.
Max: I’ve just got a few different artworks that I’ve
collected over the years. Some that are made by
a couple of different friends, and, yeah, why I’m
proud of them? Yeah, because they have a certain
value artistically, obviously, and they’re nice to
look at, and people are impressed by that, I guess.
The fact that he is interested enough in art to buy some orig-
inal paintings, and that the paintings “have a certain value
artistically,”which is recognized by others, displays cultural
capital on his part.
While what you own is an important part of pride of
ownership, frequently, respondents put much more stress
on what they had to go through to acquire and maintain
the pride-object. This is true for all five implicit goals, but
it is especially true for the previous goal of achieving non-
dependence and adulthood, and for the current goal of
achieving social status. In this way, the pride-object often
functions as a trophy representing an achievement—that
is, a status symbol (Veblen 1899), more so when the object
is consumed in a socially visible manner (Berger and Heath
2007).
The interdependent self refers to the ways we define our-
selves through our relationship to other people. Although
the desire for high social status is sometimes seen as an in-
dividualistic ambition, it is nonetheless an aspect of the in-
terdependent self (Wong and Ahuvia 1998). Many respon-
dents used social comparison to gauge the extent of their
achievement (e.g., Griskevicius et al. 2010). For example,
Cindy was the first person in several generations of her fam-
ily to break out of poverty and into a middle-class life. Al-
though her lifestyle might not be a source of pride to every-
one, it was a huge source of pride for her because of her
social comparison to her family.
Cindy: I’m the first person in my family to own a
home. ...So, I come from a long line of people
who have never really owned a home, a lot of public
housing, Department of Housing, and things like
that. So, I feel like I’ve broken a tradition of, yeah,
not having that. And it’s interesting because my
family don’t relate to that. They’re kind of like—
they’re very proud of me, but they kind of think,
“Oh, why would you own your own home if you
can have housing?”So, I feel very proud that I’ve
broken the mind-set. ...So, I’m very proud of that.
Social comparison was central to many other quotes
about the rarity of the pride-objects as indicating their ex-
clusivity. Shaurya expresses this underlying idea when he
explains why it is inappropriate to be proud of one’s cell-
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phone: “There is nothing to be proud of—everybody has a
cell phone.”The same rationale is offered by Vihaan in dis-
cussing why he is prouder of his Alienware laptop than he is
of his phone. Phones are very common, “but not everybody
has an Alienware”computer, he notes.
Goal 4: Building Close Relationships. Building on the in-
terdependent side of identity, we find evidence of pride-
objects serving as relationship markers (Ahuvia 2015) or
functioning to support close relationships. This was often
seen in feeling proud to own a gift one had received from
someone important, and taking pride in gifts given to
others. In these cases, the intensity of felt pride was linked
in part to the value of the gift, but more so, to the value the
person placed in the social relationship. Here, Sam explains
why he is prouder of a necklace he received as a gift from an
Afghani woman he had hoped to marry than he is of a cam-
era and a vase, both of which had also been gifts.
Interviewer: The necklace, why [are you prouder of
that then you are of] the camera?
Sam: Because I knew her [the woman who gave him
the necklace] a lot better than I knew this guy [the
guy who gave him the camera] or even this guy
[the guy who gave him the vase].
Importantly, the amount of pride felt for relationship
markers such as gifts is not fixed at the time the item is ac-
quired. Rather, the level of pride closely tracks changes to
the closeness of the social relationship going forward. For
example, Sam was proud to own a coin he received as a gift
from his father, but that pride lessened considerably
when his relationship with his dad became more distant.
As another example, Amit was proud of a trip he took to
Goa with friends, and the pride he feels about that trip is
very relationship-linked. However, those relationships have
faded somewhat over time, and thus his pride in the trip has
also faded. At the end of the interview, Amit was asked if
there was anything he noticed about his answers in the in-
terview that surprised him. He replied:
Amit: Yeah, actually one thing did come to my mind. It
was how [the things I am proud of are] related to the
people or with the group ...and [how the extent of
my pride] has actually changed over time. ...When
you ask me about it—Igotthinking,“Okay, so we
were good friends back then.”So maybe that was
a special trip for me back then but now it is not
the same because my relationship with those people
has been different from what it was back then. ...
Over time, the intensity of having pride in some-
thing is (connected) with the relationship (with
the people).
Having pride in owning things that mark or support
social relationships has a strong moral aspect. The high
value that Cindy places on her relationships comes through
clearly as she talks about the pride she takes in traveling.
And while she definitely enjoys these trips, her comments
also convey that she believes there is a moral value in main-
taining these relationships as the “right thing to do.”
Cindy: Well, I feel proud because a lot of my travel has
been to do with family, connecting with family.
Yes. So, I’ve always traveled a lot to England to
see my father, and my aunties, my grandma. ...
So, from when I was 16, I decided that that was
quite a strong connection. So, from 16, I kind of
traveled a lot back to the UK. So, I feel proud of
that because I’ve been responsible for maintaining
a lot of relationships because it would be easy just
to let it go because you’re so far away. You can just
say, “Oh yeah, later, later.”And then all of a sud-
den, it’sfive years later, and you think, “Oh, I
haven’t seen my mom for five years or my aunties.”
So, I feel proud that I’ve been taking the responsi-
bility to maintain that, even though it costs a for-
tune, as you know.
Having established that maintaining her close relation-
ships is a strong value for Cindy, we can see evidence of that
value in her explanation of why she is prouder of her travel
than she is of her diary.
Interviewer: So, the next one is travel and your diary.
[Which are you more proud of?]
Cindy: Okay. It has to be travel, it’s more important. ...
Relationships, yeah. Again.
Cindy’s greater pride in her travel (over her diary) is not
based on her believing that, say, her travel was more unique,
more wonderful, or more expensive (for example) than the
other items. Rather, her greater pride is an expression of the
high moral value she places on maintaining her relation-
ships.
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Goal 5: Connecting to Groups. Pride-objects helped con-
sumers connect to groups such as ethnic identities, sports
teams (Decrop and Derbaix 2010), and brand communities.
For example, Vihaan talks about his pride in the Chelsea soc-
cer club because he identifies with the ethos and personality
of the team. He sees this passion as very stable (“you can
change your religion but you can’t change your football
team”), and he fell in love with Chelsea because there was
a special fit between that club and himself (“I used to play
soccer, they used to play my kind of soccer”). Vihaan’s in-
volvement with the team and his pride in it help him con-
nect with a larger community.
Vihaan: So, we have the Chelsea Fan Club as well. So,
I’m a part of that ...I talk to [other fans] a lot—
you understand their point of view. I think it helps
me to understand different cultures as well, to be
honest. I know a lot of people from the African
countries are huge Chelsea fans because a lot of
Chelsea fans come from African region. So, when
we are commenting or saying ...a match got over
and we are just talking about it. We all have differ-
ent perspectives. Initially, it used to get to me, like
“What is he talking?”But then I tried to under-
stand their point of view as how they are. So, when
it comes to this, I guess, I’ve become more cultur-
ally sensitive. Yeah. So that’s helped me a lot, as
well. And I use it in my daily life as well to under-
stand people more than I used to.
The groups that pride-objects connect people to differ in
their cohesion and formality. For example, a fan club is an
organization with a defined membership, whereas “Chelsea
fans”constitute a more diffuse collectivity. Pride of owner-
ship can also allow one to join an even more amorphous
group of people who simply share a certain taste and sensi-
bility. For example, Amit is proud to own the Patek Philippe
watch because of the relationship it represents with his
grandfather (who gave it to him) and its exclusivity.
It is interesting to note how well his lived experience fits
with Patek Philippe’s brand strategy. To enhance its per-
ceived exclusivity, Patek Philippe positions its watches as
objects that are passed down through the generations,
transmitting a unique patrimony of aesthetic design, tech-
nical perfection, and knowledge. These can create feelings
of connoisseurship and of being a part of a select group of
owners (Kozinets et al. 2010; van Leeuwen, van Dijk, and
Kaynak 2013). Some previous work has also suggested links
between pride of ownership and the rarity and uniqueness
of the object, including its aesthetic and technical elements
(Zammuner 1996; Friedman and Neary 2008; Mathwick
et al. 2010) and its history and origin/provenance (Decrop
and Derbaix 2010; Leeuwen, van Dijk, and Kaynak 2013).
Such feelings of connoisseurship and expertise can then
lead to feelings of satisfaction, pleasure, or devotion (Pierce
et al. 2001; Decrop and Derbaix 2010); success, self-worth,
and enhancement (Wolf and McQuitty 2011; Mochon et al.
2012); as well as create the sense of being a part of a select
group, as we see in Amit’s experience (van Leeuwen et al.
2013). This connection at the level of a collective iden-
tity—being part of a select group—more strongly weaves
this pride-object into Amit’s overall identity.
Pride of Ownership over Time
One of the important and unique findings from our research
was the dynamic nature of pride of ownership. Pride of own-
ership for particular items was often quite unstable, increas-
ing or decreasing long after they were acquired. For exam-
ple, consistent with prior theorizing (Tracy and Robins
2007), if the pride-object was noticed or praised by another
person, this elicited a surge of pride. That said, several other
findings related to fluctuations in pride of ownership were
more novel.
First, relationship markers provided one of the more in-
teresting examples of how pride of ownership changed over
time. The level of pride the person felt was not fixed at the
time that the pride-object was acquired, but rather contin-
ued to increase or decrease over time as the linked relation-
ship became closer or more distant. For example, Sam ex-
plained that some years ago he was very proud of a gold
coin he had received as a gift from his father. But more re-
cently, his father had cheated on his mother, which severely
damaged his relationship with his father. This shift in the
relationship significantly lowered the pride he felt for the
coin. As another example, Amit was proud of a trip he took
to Goa with friends. However, because those relationships
had faded a bit over time, his pride in the trip has also faded.
Second, it is well known that sports fans take vicarious
pride in their team’s victories (Decrop and Derbais 2010;
van Leeuwen et al. 2013), and their feelings of pride rise
and fall with the excellence (or lack thereof) displayed by
their team. In a somewhat analogous process, respondents
also took vicarious pride in the accomplishments and attri-
butes of the things they owned, and their pride shifted over
time with the excellence (or lack thereof) displayed by the
pride-object. This can be seen in Cindy’s pride for her car.
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Cindy: My car is decreasing [in pride] because it’s get-
ting old. ...It’s a bomb now. Yeah. So [laughter]
obviously, I was very proud when I bought it, but
now over time, it’s like, “Ugh, I need a new one.”
Yeah. So, I’m not that proud of it anymore now.
Taking vicarious pride in the positive attributes of the
things we own can also help explain some of the pride of
ownership people feel for gifts. The fact that people feel
proud of owning gifts that they did not “earn”may at first
be perplexing: if the object reflects neither one’s effort
nor one’s talent, what is there to be proud of? As already
noted, part of this pride may come from the fact that the
gift is a relationship marker: it symbolizes an important so-
cial relationship and the approval the person feels within
that relationship. Yet, in some cases, that is only part of
the story. For example, Amit’s pride in his Patek Philippe
watch he received as a gift from his grandfather is partly be-
cause it represents his grandfather’s respect and approval.
However, Amit also explicitly states that had it not been a
gift, he would still have been proud of it. Why? He answers
this question below by first praising his watch for its fine
qualities, then noting that it is not a trophy of his achieve-
ment, before finally concluding that he takes pride in it be-
cause it is ”a wonderful thing.”
Amit: About the watch, I feel [pride] probably because
the watch is really nice. It’s one of a kind, auto-
matic, as I told you, it’s really elegant look, and
as I told you, it’s a high-end luxury watch. ...[The
watchis]notmyachievementinanysense,you
know? It’s not something I bought it for myself for
my own money or something. But when it comes
to pride, [the watch is] a wonderful thing. So, I take
pride in it that I have one of these watches.
Amit takes vicarious pride in the excellence of his watch,
in much the same way that people take pride in the accom-
plishments of their nation or their sports team. In these
cases, the word “take”(from the phrase “to take pride in
something”) is highly apropos. Vicarious pride occurs when
we include someone or something in our extended self. In so
doing, we take the pride that belongs to that person or
thing, and make it our own.
Finally, one of the most intriguing findings was that
when comparing how much pride they felt in various
pride-objects, respondents routinely reported that they
were prouder of objects that played a greater role in their
daily life (for an identical finding with regard to brand love,
see Batra et al. 2012). This was somewhat puzzling, because
pride of ownership was frequently contingent on the mun-
dane happenstance of a respondent’s life in ways that
seemed to have no connection to extant theories of pride.
For example, pride of ownership was found to change over
time as frequency of interaction changed. Both Vihaan and
Divit were proud of their cars that they left in India when
they came to study in Australia. Both of them made remark-
ably similar comments, namely, that their pride in the car
has decreased simply because they do not use it regularly
now. The examples from Vihaan and Divit make it clear that
it is not the case that the quality of the pride-object has de-
clined. Rather, they just happen to be unable to use their
cars at the moment, and this has led to a decrease in pride,
even though it seems to have nothing to do with any of the
usual bases for pride.
A similar phenomenon can seem to occur even when the
frequency of use does not change. Max used to feel proud of
his bed, but that pride has decreased over time. A bed is an
unusual possession in that the extent of our use of that ob-
ject tends to be remarkably stable over time. Thus, it is un-
likely that Max’s usage frequency has changed, but the same
cannot be said for his mental engagement with his bed.
Max: I was proud of it when I initially got it, and
then, I guess, you get used to having it, and maybe
it’s not as much of a novelty over time.
When the bed was new it was interesting, so he thought
about it a lot; now, not so much. This would also be true
for Vihaan’s and Divit’s cars, since the cars are far away;
Vihaan and Divit do not think of them very often. This sug-
gests that it is not the frequency of use per se that influences
pride, but rather the extent of mental involvement the per-
son has with the object on a day-to-day basis.
CONCLUSION
Contributions to Theory
This research extends our understanding of pride by explor-
ing pride of ownership (broadly understood). In keeping
with extant theory, this pride model is strongly focused on
individuals and their positive aspects of the self. One novel
insight in the current study is the association between pride
of ownership and the closeness of the person-thing aspect of
the relationship between the owner and the pride-object. It
was very common for respondents to report experiencing
changes in pride simply based on how often they interacted
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with the pride-object or thought they would interact with it
in the future, which we interpreted as being the behavioral
aspect of relationship closeness. Park and colleagues (2013)
have also noted how the frequency of interactions can raise
a brand’s“prominence.”We find this closeness includes the
extent of mental engagement with the pride-object, its per-
ceived everyday importance, and the owner’s emotional at-
tachment to the pride-object. The finding that pride of own-
ership can wax and wane with closeness of the person-thing
relationship is new and not accounted for in past work.
Our findings are clearly relevant for better understand-
ing how consumers’pride of ownership increases or de-
creases over time within the context of a consumer rela-
tionship. In the time leading up to acquisition and shortly
thereafter, pride of ownership largely conforms to extant
theories and commonsense assumptions. People are prouder
to own something if it is excellent, rare, and signifies major
achievement on their part. At the time of acquisition, people
are also proud to own certain gifts. At first blush, this is a bit
puzzling, as the gift may not reflect any achievements or
abilities on the consumer’s part that one would expect to
produce pride. Instead, we find pride in gifts also stems
from three sources: (1) the owner may take vicarious pride
in the fine qualities of the pride-object, (2) the owner may
feel pride just from knowing that others may be impressed
by the object, and (3) the owner may experience pride from
feeling that he or she is a socially valued person in the eyes
of the gift-giver.
It is in the time period after acquisition that our findings
are most surprising. Initial pride of ownership may have
been based on the fact that the pride-object represents an im-
portant achievement, and the importance of that achieve-
ment may not have changed over time. Still, the amount of
pride of ownership can diminish if the pride-object itself
wears down, becomes outdated, or through no fault of its
own gets used less frequently by the owner. In addition, if
the pride-object serves as a relationship marker within a
person-thing-person relationship, pride of ownership will
fluctuate over time if the underlying interpersonal relation-
ship becomes closer or more distant.
Managerial Implications
Our findings and framework (fig. 1) suggest multiple routes
through which marketers can attempt to increase the level
of pride felt by owners of their brands. First, increasing
the incentive for, and ease of, individually personalizing
the product or service ought to increase pride of ownership,
especially if significant effort is involved. Second, pride
should also increase with the linkages made between the
brand and the sense of personal achievement it symbol-
izes—and with links made with feelings of agency and in-
dependence it comes to represent (similar to the sense of
“autonomy”highlighted by Warren and Campbell 2014).
Third, the brand should evoke more pride of ownership
with connections made with its history and origin, and
thequalityofrareworkmanshipthatwentintoit(e.g.,
“Tito’s Handmade Vodka from Austin, TX”). Fourth, con-
nections could potentially be made between the brand and
significant social others, with the aim of deepening its as-
sociations with meaningful social relationships, for instance,
by embedding its consumption into social rituals or com-
munal consumption, even gift-giving.
Methodological Contributions
Another major contribution of this work is the formal intro-
duction of the surfacing methodology. Along with surfacing
questions, our interviews included standard qualitative
depth-interview questions. When we analyzed the data, a
difference between the question types became clear. Sup-
pose, for example, a respondent was proud of her house.
The standard depth-interview questions would foreground
the respondent’s overall thoughts and feelings about her
house. In contrast, the surfacing questions would fore-
ground the nature of pride and what it means to be proud
of one’s house. In commercial market research settings
and many scientific research settings, understanding what
a consumer thinks about a particular product or brand is
an important objective. In these cases, the standard depth-
interview questions can do an excellent job. However, if the
core research question is about the nature and scope of a con-
struct, such as pride, then the surfacing questions have much
to offer.
Future Research
Our model (fig. 1) opens up several lines of future research.
This model presents five goals that exist over three stages
of ownership (prepurchase, purchase, and postpurchase).
Thinking of this as a 5 3 model, each “cell”can be a source
of future research. For example, little is known about the
ownership phase of family heirlooms. Future research can
also examine, within every row, how the longitudinal pas-
sage of time impacts each implicit goal. For instance, how
does anticipation of acquisition differ from passing on an
heirloom, in the case of new (and old) recipients? Finally,
each implicit goal can be compared and contrasted along
both dimensions. For example, how the passage of time af-
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fects a person’s sense of self for heirlooms (highly interde-
pendent) can be contrasted with a university degree (highly
independent). In sum, we believe our model contributes a
useful typology for organizing past research and suggesting
new possibilities.
Finally, it is worth noting the similarities between pride,
as we have studied it, and brand love. For the first author,
who has also conducted interviews with people about the
things they love, there were many places in the pride inter-
views that felt almost eerily similar to that earlier work on
love. Not surprisingly, the excellence of products has a big
impact on both pride and love. Both pride and love also re-
volve around identity, so both are enhanced by things that
increase the integration of the object into the owner’s iden-
tity, including the work and creativity the owner has in-
vested in the object or the extent to which the object is linked
to the owner’s life narrative. The person-thing-person as-
pects of both pride of ownership and brand love are ex-
tremely strong. And the closeness of the person-thing rela-
tionship seems to have a major impact (unsurprisingly) on
brand love and (much more surprisingly) on pride of owner-
ship. That said, pride and love are also clearly separate con-
structs, so clarifying the relationship between them is an in-
teresting possible area for future work.
Overall, the current research takes important steps in
mapping the construct of pride of ownership. In doing so,
it also provides an impetus to future consumer research fo-
cused on developing a more nuanced understanding of pride
of ownership, in particular, and the emotion of pride, more
generally.
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