Rituals Enhance Self-Brand Connection: The Role of Time Perception

“Twist, Lick, Dunk!” Although Oreo has never explicitly recognized these three special actions as a brand ritual, it does educate consumers to perform a series of fixed and sequential behaviors to consume the cookie in an inadvertent manner (Rook 1985). This paper aims to reveal the effect of this kind of a brand ritual. Since a brand ritual relies on shared meaningful activities for consumers within their own spaces, we contend that the nature of a brand ritual is individual-based. This paper adopts the notion of an individual-based ritual as a ritualistic behavior with a symbolic meaning, occurring in a fixed and episodic sequence (Vohs, Wang, Gino, and Norton 2013). Three studies demonstrate that a brand ritual makes consumers feel time expands, i.e., feeling they have abundant time at hand, further reinforcing their connection with the brand. Self-brand connection represents the extent of how a consumer incorporates a brand into “self” (Escalas and Bettman 2003). The causal impact has been hinted in anthropology. Performing a ritual may lead consumers to be more emotional and inclined toward incorporating a brand into the “self” concept (Di and Hassenkamp 2008). Besides, a brand ritual may influence consumers’ time perception, which is linked with feelings and behaviors (Graham 1981; Rudd, Vohs, and Aaker 2012). Since a ritual is often linked with special occasions that make people feel, memorize, and immerse themselves into the special moment, consumers experiencing a brand ritual may also feel and involve themselves with the brand. Thus, we anticipate that a brand ritual expands time perception, thereby triggering a connection with the brand.