Consumer identification: an interdisciplinary review of the marketing and sport management literature and future research agenda

Consumer identification has become a frequently researched construct in the past two decades, as its growth has become a major marketing goal of organizations. As consumer identification occurs within the contexts of brands and sports teams, both marketing and sport management literature deals with the construct. However, neither research stream has managed to establish a scientific consensus about the critical elements of consumer identification, neither within nor between the disciplines. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide an interdisciplinary review of consumer identification that analyzes each discipline’s current state of research, derives recommendations for cross-fertilization, and provides a future research agenda. To do so, we transparently and reproducibly examine definitions, antecedents and consequences, operationalizations, and the research designs of 104 high-quality publications from the marketing and sport management disciplines. As a result, we derive five valuable guidelines for future consumer identification definitions, draw a holistic concept picture of the construct, provide advice for measure development, and develop recommendations on empirical research designs. Finally, we identify existing research gaps to advance the literature on consumer identification. Our findings have significant implications for future scholarship. In addition, they should enrich practitioners’ understanding of the highly relevant consumer identification construct.