Can nationalism and religious approaches be harmonized? Three-way interaction effects on small business consumer brand identification

Religion and nationalism are two of the prominent individual identities which can signify the consumers’ emotional attachment to the brand. However, brand communication rarely incorporates those two approaches simultaneously due to their seemingly contradictory nature, which may burden the overall brand messages. This study investigates the three-way interaction between consumers’ brand identification (CBI), national identity (NI), religious brand positioning (RBP), and their effects on purchase intention (PI). According to the context of this study, an experimental survey involving two groups of small business consumers was employed in the data collection. Hierarchical multiple regression is used to investigate the three-way interaction between CBI, NI, RBP, and PI. The result revealed a significant three-way interaction effect, where the strongest influence was found in high NI and brands with religious positioning scenarios. This study concluded that nationalism and religious identities do not reject each other. Moreover, those two identities simultaneously strengthen consumers’ emotional attachment to the brands. Hence, small business owners can develop communication strategies to affirm consumers’ nationalism and religious identities.