The role of psychological well-being, self-monitoring, social desirability and self-esteem in the effects of ideal self and actual self on advertising engagement

Self-concept, which is characterised as an individual's perceptions and evaluations of himself/herself, is related to advertising because consumers use products and brands to show themselves and communicate their values to others. Brands also use the self-concept as an emotional appeal in their advertisements. Therefore, it is important to explore the influence of self on advertising engagement. The aim of this thesis is to find out which of the self types, the real self and the ideal self, results in higher engagement when the real self and the ideal self are an attraction element in advertising, and to examine the moderating effect of self-esteem, self-monitoring and social desirability and the mediating effect of psychological well-being in this effect. Within the scope of the purpose of the study, experimental research from quantitative research methods and full experimental research from experimental design designs were preferred. Two advertisements, one with real self stimulus and one with ideal self stimulus, were designed as videos. 470 of the 920 participants were randomly assigned to the real self stimulus and 450 to the ideal self stimulus. Confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, ANCOVA analysis and Hayes Model 14 analysis with SPSS Process Macro were performed for the data collected from the participants. As a result, it was observed that the real self was more effective on ad engagement in the context of direct effect; however, when the situational mediation effects of psychological well-being in the regulation of self-monitoring, social desirability and self-esteem came into play, the ideal self was more effective on ad engagement. By understanding how consumers' self-concepts reflect on their consumption preferences in the field of advertising, products and services can be explained to consumers with more effective strategies.