In the early 1990s, outdoor clothing brand Timberland experienced unexpected growth in its consumer base and sales. The brand's popular waterproof leather boots, generally used for outdoor activities and navigating rough terrain, were worn by inner-city youth as a fashion statement. These new consumers wanted to keep their boots as clean as possible and some even wore them in the summer heat, an incongruous contrast to how the target market used boots in rough and messy weather. Even as Timberland enjoyed the unexpected sales, it was faced with a decision. They should try to further exploit this involuntary market; if so, how would Timberland's target market of outdoor enthusiasts respond? In this case, it appeared that these non-target consumers had no effect on the brand's intended target market. So, in response, Timberland kept advertising focused on the brand's traditional target audience, while urban consumers continued to purchase Timberland products. The brand continued to grow, reaching global sales of over $1 billion by 2007 (Fitch 2009). The adoption of a brand by a non-target market does not always have such positive results. Since the 1990s, luxury brand Burberry has been concerned with its association with "chavs" in Britain. Chavs are a lower class group associated with rowdyism, hooliganism and crime. They have adopted the famous Burberry checkered pattern as part of their uniform. This has resulted in a decrease in brand loyalty among Burberry's upper class English customers. In response, the company discontinued the checkered caps and reduced its reliance on the popular plaid design (Fitch 2009). In both the cases of Timberland and Burberry, a non-target market adopted a bra... paper ......construct their own identity and present themselves to others through brand choices based on congruence between brand user associations and self-image associations (Escalas and Bettman 2003). But from recent literature on reference groups, consumers show a greater tendency to avoid products associated with dissociative reference groups. This creates an interesting theoretical tension for the circumstances under which brand remixing occurs. At what point of dissociation does the congruence between the user's associations of the brand and self-image become so influenced by the group's need for dissociation that it discourages consumer choice? Through the following theoretical model, we consider not only the changing associations, but also who is changing the associations. Additionally, we consider the characteristics of the target market and how this may influence the decoupling effect.