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 cansignify the consumers’ emotional attachment to the brand. However, brandcommunication rarely incorporates those two approaches simultaneously due to theirseemingly contradictory nature, which may burden the overall brand messages. Thisstudy investigates the three-way interaction between consumers’ brand identification(CBI), national identity (NI), religious brand positioning (RBP), and their effects onpurchase intention (PI). According to the context of this study, an experimental surveyinvolving two groups of small business consumers was employed in the data collection.Hierarchical multiple regression is used to investigate the three-way interaction betweenCBI, NI, RBP, and PI. The result revealed a significant three-way interaction effect, wherethe strongest influence was found in high NI and brands with religious positioningscenarios. This study concluded that nationalism and religious identities do not rejecteach other. Moreover, those two identities simultaneously strengthen consumers’emotional attachment to the brands. Hence, small business owners can developcommunication strategies to affirm consumers’ nationalism and religious identities