Purpose The purpose of the study was twofold: (1) to examine the impact of the congruity of sports brand collaborations on consumers' explicit and implicit attitudes in conjunction with their need for uniqueness (NFU) and (2) to examine the relative effects of explicit and implicit attitudes on purchase intention. Design/methodology/approach The study employed a 3 (congruity: low vs. moderate vs. high) × 3 (brand: Nike vs. Asics vs. Converse) mixed factorial experimental design. Participants watched the manipulated stimulus, then completed a single target implicit association test (ST-IAT) and a questionnaire measuring explicit attitude, purchase intention, and NFU. Findings The results revealed no significant differences in explicit and implicit attitudes across congruity levels. However, the “high-NFU” group showed a more positive explicit attitude when collaboration is highly congruent. The implicit attitude was positively related to the explicit attitude, while the explicit attitude was positively related to purchase intention. Originality/value This study integrated schema congruity theory and the associative-propositional evaluation model to elucidate the differential impact of incongruity on consumers' dual attitudes, establishing theoretical originality by demonstrating the sequential linkage between implicit and explicit processing.
Kim et al. (Tue,) studied this question.