Bridging the “Selves”: Exploring Gambling Motivations Using SelfCongruence Theory

Abstract

The theory of self-congruence or how our self-concept matches with reality has been shown to affect customer satisfaction (Hosany and Martin 2012) as well as the compulsiveness in buying a product and the manner of consumption (Japutra, Ekinci, and Simkin 2019; Graeff 1996). Research on self-congruence in marketing has primarily looked at its association with physical products, services or brands, yet few have explored its applicability in the context of gambling. This apparent lacking deserves further scrutiny. While usually categorised under the same umbrella, a gambler’s role may differentiate depending on the form of gambling he participates in. This, among other things, has led to a number of studies discussing problematic gambling, however very few where motivations behind problem-free gambling is addressed (Binde, 2013). This paper is an attempt to discuss the relevance of the concept of self-congruence in explaining gambling behaviour, with the specific research question arrived at as ‘how does gambling act as a bridge between consumers’ actual and ideal selves?’ The paper extends Binde’s five-dimensional model of gambling motives with self-congruence dimensions. The concept of self in this paper is taken as the cognitive and affective understanding of who and what we are, the two forms of the actual self and the ideal self are considered (Malär et al. 2011). Binde (2013)’s five factors model, comprising of the dream of hitting the jackpot, intellectual challenge, social rewards, mood change as motivators toward an increased perception of chance of winning is adopted as a bridge that facilitates consumers’ move from oneself to the other. The discussion conceptualizes that the expectation system in the biopsychological domain induces feelings associated with ideal selfcongruence, while the sociocultural domain is argued to have a connection to self-congruence in accordance with the asymmetry of gambling and customer satisfaction. In addition, coupled with the motivations, a larger gap in self-congruence is propositioned to be more prevalent among lower income groups in the context of gambling. Further research is suggested to empirically test its veracity.