This research highlights the importance of retailer-consumer identity congruence – the match between the retail brand identity and the consumers’ identity. Retailers can leverage identity congruence to forge meaningful consumer-brand relationships which will result in enhanced engagement, brand loyalty, and willingness to pay. The paper discusses how creative merchandise offerings and innovative merchandising strategies contribute to the creation of a unique retail brand identity and facilitate communication of this identity to consumers. Based on interviews with retail practitioners, we formulate five ways in which retailers can establish and communicate their brand identity through creative merchandise offerings (by focusing on unique and original merchandise, leveraging local merchandise to reflect the area, making their merchandise akin to art, offering sustainable merchandise, and a high fashion product assortment). In addition, we focus on five innovative merchandising strategies which help the retailer connect the brand to the customer (creating themes, reflecting the brand story, being playful, signaling exclusivity, and virtual merchandising). We then discuss how retailers can utilize social and technological tools to amplify the retailer identity to consumers, thus increasing the likelihood that a consumer will view their identity congruent with the retail brand.

这项研究强调了零售商与消费者身份一致性的重要性-零售品牌身份与消费者身份之间的匹配。零售商可以利用身份一致性来建立有意义的消费者与品牌之间的关系，从而提高参与度，品牌忠诚度和支付意愿。本文讨论了创意商品和创新商品策略如何有助于创建独特的零售品牌标识并促进这种标识与消费者的交流。根据对零售从业人员的采访，我们制定了五种方式，使零售商可以通过创造性的商品提供来建立和传达其品牌形象（通过关注独特和原创的商品，利用本地商品来反映该区域，使其商品类似于艺术品，提供可持续发展的商品和高级时装产品）。此外，我们专注于五种创新的销售策略，这些策略可帮助零售商将品牌与客户联系起来（创建主题，反映品牌故事，好玩，表示排他性和虚拟销售）。然后，我们讨论零售商如何利用社交和技术工具来扩大零售商对消费者的身份，从而增加消费者看到其与零售品牌一致的身份的可能性。