Actual and ideal self-congruity affecting consumers’ emotional and behavioral responses toward an online store

• Actual self-congruity positively affects the evaluation of visual and information atmospheric cues of an online store.
• Ideal self-congruity negatively affects the evaluation of visual and information atmospheric cues of an online store.
• The positive evaluations of visual and information atmospheric cues lead to delight.
• Delight increases the consumer’s purchasing intention from an online store.

Recognizing that a consumer’s congruity judgment with a store image can be formed with both actual and ideal self-images, this study investigates the differential effects that these two congruity judgments might have on a consumer’s evaluation of an online store. The results indicate that the closer the image of an online store is to the consumer’s actual self, the more favorably the store is evaluated. Interestingly, however, the proximity between the image of an online store and a consumer’s ideal self has a negative effect on consumer evaluation toward the store. The results also indicate that the positive visual cues of an online store generate consumer delight more significantly than information cues do. Consumer delight is found to significantly increase the intention to make an initial purchase from the store.