Over the last decades, the global luxury business has become dominated by large conglomerates. Backed by the financial power of their parent companies, formerly small and often family-owned brands have expanded their presence around the globe. They have established themselves in some of the most expensive shopping districts, acquired illustrious testimonials, and sponsored prestigious events. Almost overwhelmed by the omnipresence of luxury, consumers are said to have begun looking for the “genuine” and “unique,” favoring smaller, less homogenized and more intimate luxury brands not necessarily known to the larger public. This study thus looks beyond the well-known players in the luxury market and explores the differentiating strategies used by independent niche luxury companies. It aims to identify factors contributing to their success in a global market otherwise dominated by ever-growing luxury giants.

A growing number of authors state that in recent years the notion of luxury has become all too common. Many say that authenticity is the real rare good in today’s luxury marketplace. Overwhelmed by the omnipresence of luxury and its homogenization, consumers are said to start looking for the genuine and unique, favoring smaller, more intimate and independent luxury brands. This study looks beyond well-known global players in the luxury marketplace, exploring the identities of independent niche luxury companies, their differentiating characteristics and in particular the role of authenticity. Keywords: corporate identity; corporate image; authenticity; luxury brand management; niche luxury brands; independent luxury brands

The paper proposes an analytical approach that explores brands in virtual environments by combining indicators of consumer brand alignment with measurements of social engagement. The results illustrated can be useful to devise adjustments to brand communication. The analysis is applied to brands belonging to the fashion industry.

The Chinese fashion market, which has typically been dominated by luxury brands, is expanding more into mid- to low-end fashion brands including global SPA (Specialty retailer of private label apparel) brands. This change in the Chinese fashion market is due to the growth of the middle class in China. The advance of the Chinese middle class is attributed to the fact that the wages of large city workers is improving due to the development of various industries, particularly IT. Recently, the Chinese government has initiated an anti-corruption movement, which has led to the prohibition of luxury goods consumption, and so the interest of Chinese potential fashion consumers has moved to the mid-to low-end fashion products imported from developed countries. In addition, young Chinese consumers' positive attitude toward online shopping is favorable for foreign mid-to low-end brands. These changes in the tastes of Chinese fashion consumers are favorable for Korean fashion brands in particular for several reasons. First, the Korean fashion industry does not have a history of producing luxury brands, but does produce many good mid- to low-end fashion brands. In addition, Chinese tend to consider Korean fashion and food culture as more developed and preferable due to the success of the Korean wave. Lastly, it is easy for Korean practitioners to offer online shopping and customer service. The emergence of mid- to low-end fashion brands started in Korea in the late 2000s when global SPA brands entered the market. Unlike Korea's soho brands, which are based on the "No-brand" strategy, global SPA brands have actually shaken up the market by offering reasonable prices for Korean domestic brand products that are of similar quality. Since then, consumers’ willingness to pay for clothing has been reduced even further in the Korean market even though the low-growth trend in the economy has stabilized. So, it is very important to analyze and study the consumption tendency for low and mid-priced fashion brands among both Chinese and Korean consumers. The purpose of this study was to investigate how Chinese and Korean consumers perceive the personality of mid- and low-priced fashion brands and how such personality affects brand loyalty, commitment, and perceived quality. Brand personality is a vital area of research since fashion products are a type of consumer good that is consumed by users close to the body and which can express the self and the personality to others. Aaker (1997) developed a brand personality measurement scale consisting of five dimensions which many researchers have used in exploring the brand personality dimension in various industries. In the study of fashion in particular, the dimension of brand personality has been explored and its effects have been analyzed. However, most of the research has focused on luxury or high priced brands. Also, the research has not compared cultures such as China and Korea in this regard. Therefore, this study explored how Chinese and Korean consumers perceive some of the mid- to low-end priced brands originating in Europe and Korea. Also, the research examined how multiple dimensions of brand personality affected perceived quality, commitment, and brand loyalty. This study assumed that perceived quality and commitment may mediate the relationship between brand personality dimensions and loyalty. In order to conduct quantitative research, this study adopted scales from the previous literature to measure the variables used in the research model. A professional online research company conducted the survey, which was designed to be administered only to potential consumers of mid-and low-priced fashion brands who had purchased one or both European and Korean brands which were suggested in the survey. Also, gender (female), residential area (Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai), and age (21-39 years old) were controlled for. In this research, the European origin brand was the global SPA (Zara, H & M, ONLY), and there were eight Korean brands, including “Style Nanda,” which is popular in China (Refer to Table 1). The data collected on the 250 Korean and 250 Chinese participants were analyzed using statistical package SPSS 20.0. The brand personality dimension was explored using factor analysis which applied Varimax rotation based on the principle component method. As a result, even though the items included were found to be somewhat different according to the country and origin of the brand, the brand personality dimensions of the European global brands turned out to be similar and reflected “TRENDY, SINCERITY, AND COMPETENCE.” Also, Chinese consumers’ perception of brand personality in Korean brands was found to be similar to their perception of European brands. However, Korean consumers’ perception of Korean brands, which are of course their own brands, was more diverse reflecting “TRENDY, SINCERITY, COMPETENCE, AND OUTGOING.” This seems to be because Korean consumers may have had more chance to experience Korean brands either online or offline through visiting stores or being exposed to a variety of marketing communications. Thus, because there are more Korean brands than European, Korean consumers may be able to have an accurate perception of the personality of Korean brands. The conceptual model of the current research includes the relationships among multiple dimensions of brand personality in perceived quality, commitment, and loyalty. Also, the mediating effect of quality and commitment between brand personality and loyalty was examined. In order to test the hypotheses, hierarchical multiple regression using SPSS was analyzed and is described in Table 2 in relation to European brands and in Table 3 in relation to Korean brands. As expected, brand personality dimensions that were found to be a significant factor in perceived quality, commitment, and loyalty were likely to vary based on Chinese or Korean perceptions. For Korean consumers’ perception of global brands, while TRENDY was likely to be the most powerful personality dimension forming brand loyalty, its impact on loyalty seemed not to be mediated by quality but rather by commitment. Also, the influences of COMPETENCE on loyalty were mediated by quality and commitment. For Chinese consumers’ perception of global brands, the impacts of SINCERITY as well as TRENDY on loyalty were found to be mediated by quality and commitment. In addition, COMPETENCE seemed to have a rather direct impact on quality, commitment, and loyalty without a mediating effect. For local brands, Korean consumers did not seem to rely on brand personality or commitment when considering brand loyalty. Since the R2 did not improve at all with adding mediating factors such as quality and commitment, there was found to be no mediating effects in the Korean cases for local brands. In particular, while TRENDY directly impacted loyalty, OUTGOING was found to be significant only in its impact on quality. On the other hand, all three dimensions of local brand personality turned out to be significant influencers on loyalty and quality for Chinese consumers. The impact of TRENDY and COMPETENCE on loyalty seems to be mediated by quality and commitment. In this study, we found that mid- to low-end fashion brands seemed to reflect valid brand personality according to the brand’s origin (global vs. local) as well as consumers’ culture (Chinese vs. Korean). Also, the effect of brand personality dimension was different. This study contributes to the study of brand personality and the Chinese fashion market by comparing a conceptual model of the consumption behavior of Chinese and Korean consumers in relation to mid and low-priced fashion brands and brand awareness formation. In particular, the research revealed differences between Chinese and Korean consumers, suggesting different approaches for Korean fashion practitioners who are planning on entering China, which has not only a similar market to that of Korea but also one that is familiar to Korean practitioners.

Some clothing manufacturers and retailers use attractive endorsers on their advertising. However, according to recent research, consumers with low body esteem evaluate the clothing items more negatively when they try them on in the fitting room and find that they are inferior to the attractive advertising endorser wearing the same items (Dahl, Argo, & Morales, 2012). Is it always true? Should clothing companies not use attractive endorsers? When Dahl, et al. (2012) emphasized the negative impact of an attractive endorser and discussed body esteem, they implicitly assumed body-related consumption, in which consumers wear clothing items to enrich their physical appearance. However, other research on fashion has suggested that consumers often wear clothing items for self-expression (e.g., Piacentiti & Malier, 2004). Luxury fashion brands have been particularly regarded as symbols of wealth, so consumers wear luxury fashion clothing items to show off their high status (Shavitt, 1989; Wilcox, Kim & Sen, 2009). Thus, status-related consumption should be considered in addition to body-related consumption. Considering status-related consumption, this research introduces another kind of self-esteem, i.e., status esteem, which refers to how confident consumers are in their status. Assuming that there are two types of self-esteem, body esteem (or external esteem) and status esteem (or internal esteem), both of which are related to clothing, we hypothesize that consumers low in status esteem will evaluate a status-related product more positively than consumers high in status esteem when their consumption aligns (vs. when it does not align) with an attractive endorser even though they are low in body esteem. To test the hypothesis, we conducted three laboratory experiments. The result of multiple regression analysis showed that our hypothesis was supported. By suggesting that even consumers with low body and status esteem can evaluate status-related product positively, when finding that they are inferior to the advertising endorser in terms of body, this research expands our understanding on how attractive advertising endorsers affect consumer evaluation of clothing items focusing on two kinds of selfesteem, body and status esteem.

Despite an extensive literature in scarcity, limited studies have examined how scarcity appeal may deter consumers in obtaining luxury brands. This study aims to understand consumer perception towards luxury brands as underpinned by the theory of agonistic behaviour from biology literature. Introduction The luxury brand industry has long strived to achieve the perception of scarcity. Luxury brands are defined as the highest level of prestigious brands including physical and mostly intangible elements in which price and quality ratios are the highest in the market (Nueno & Quelch 1998; Vigneron & Johnson 1999). Only the wealthy are able to afford the products (Radon, 2012). Its exclusivity, rarity/scarcity, identity, perceived quality, and awareness have become the selling point of luxury brands (Pantzalis 1995; Phau & Prendergast 2000). As Smith (1776, 112) stated, “the merit of an object, which is in any degree either useful or beautiful, is greatly enhanced by its scarcity. . .”. According to literature, scarcity effect can only be created when the product is desirable yet achievable to be possessed by consumers (Verhallen 1982). It can be initiated due to low supply or high demand (Verhallen 1982, Verhallen and Robben 1994). Scarcity to high demand indicates that there is a high number of individuals who have purchased the products. This may appeal to the consumers who wish to assimilate themselves with others or called as followers (Worchel 1992; Amaldoss and Jain 2008). On the other hand, limited edition product is an example of scarcity due to low supply. In this situation, the firm intentionally limits the quantity of potential owners of the product (Gierl, Plantsch, and Schweidler 2008). Research has shown that low supply scarcity cue increases product desirability as it signals exclusivity to the owner and provides consumers with a unique image (Lynn 1989). As a result, low-supply scarcity is more appealing for leaders who wish to distinguish themselves from the group (Amaldoss and Jain 2008). Further, scarcity is often associated with perceived expensiveness (e.g. Lynn 1989; Wu and Hsing 2006). In other words, the scarcer the product, the more expensive and valuable the product is seen (Chen and Sun 2013; Gierl, Plantsch, and Schweidler 2008). This explains why numerous luxury brands companies create limited edition product at a higher price to increase the product appeal. However, in the recent years, interest in luxury goods is growing among mainstream consumers (So, 2015). The exclusivity of luxury brands starts to fade, and the circle of luxury brands owner has expanded significantly throughout the years (The Economist 2015; Yeoman & McMahon- Beattie 2014). Based on that rationale, one of the aims of this paper is to manage and improve the perception of scarcity in luxury brand industry by looking at the most basic concept of how consumers respond to scarcity. This study adopts a biology theory, specifically on animal behaviour to understand better how consumers react on scarcity. After decades of observing animal behaviour, ethologists found that there is a common pattern in the way animals respond to and compete for scarce resources (McGlone, 1986; Scott & Fredericson, 1951). Instead of fighting one another, animals tend to perform certain behaviours to scare the opponent without physically damaging the others. This behaviour is referred to as agonistic behaviour. Coined by Scott & Fredericson (1951), the term is defined as “the group of behavioural adjustments associated with fighting, which includes attack, escape, threat, and defence” (McGlone, 1986, 1130). It comprises several stages, namely threats, thought process, aggression, and submission. In the first stage, threat, the animals perform a species-specific behaviour, in term of vocalisations, facial expression, postures, and movements that signal the intention to be aggressive (McGlone, 1986). For example, when competing for food, monkeys create a threatening voice following with open-jawed and head bobbing. The threat is continued with the thought process where the animals examine the value of the resources and the internal and external factors influencing their decision. It is then led to two possible scenarios. In the first scenario, the opponent decides to withdraw the fight after being threatened, which is called as submissive behaviour. The second scenario happens when neither animal retreats. Therefore, they perform aggressive behaviours, and it stops when one party submits (submissive behaviour). Agonistic behaviour can be observed in human behaviour when competing for luxury brands. For example, when the Kanye West x Adidas Yeezy limited edition trainer shoes was released, it was sold out within 15 minutes (Tewari, 2015). Shortly after, the shoes were sold at $ 10,000 on Ebay, which originally priced for $200 a pair in a retail store (Tempesta, 2015). Similar to the agonistic behaviour in animals, although some choose to fight for the product, which means they perform the aggressive behaviour, there are those who prefer to be submissive. They opt to give up and purchase alternatives instead of pursuing the desired products. This phenomenon shows how consumers can be aggressive or submissive in competing for scarce products. Despite the similarities behaviour pattern between animals and consumers, limited research has identified the agonistic behaviour of consumers. There are research gaps within the scarcity literature. Firstly, limited studies have identified the effectiveness of different scarcity cues (supply-driven and demand-driven) in the context of luxury brands (e.g., Lynn, 1991; Worchel, Lee, & Adewole, 1975). Additionally, limited studies investigate the opposite effect of scarcity appeal (except Gierl and Huettl 2010). As identified, some consumers prefer to give up and purchase alternative such as mimic brands yet it has not been well understood in theory. As a result, this paper aims to (1) develop a framework to explain consumer behaviour towards scarce luxury products as underpinned by the theory of agonistic behaviour, (2) investigate the influence of the different type of scarcity cues (supply-driven and demand-driven) towards the purchase intention of the desired brands or alternatives. Theoretical framework and hypothesis developments Underpinning Theoretical Framework The theory of agonistic behaviour is the underpinning theoretical framework for the study which is supported by Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model. Developed by Mehrabian & Russell (1974), S-O-R model has been widely used in a retail environment (Buckley, 1991; Chang, Eckman, & Yan, 2011) and to study different types of involvement (Arora, 1982). Stimulus is defined as any external stimuli that influence the internal states of an individual (Bagozzi, 1986; Eroglu, Machleit, & Barr, 2005). Organism is defined as the internal response which then leads to behaviour action, which is the Response from S-O-R model (Bagozzi, 1986). It is the final decision of consumers which lead to a certain action (Chang et al., 2011). The S-O-R model is outlined below: Stimulus The perceived scarcity and competition are the Stimulus which are influenced by the different scarcity cues presented. As mentioned, scarcity effect can be caused due to high demand or low supply. Hence, there may be no difference in term of the perceived scarcity. However, supply- driven scarcity is found to be more efficient for conspicuous consumption products while demand- driven scarcity is more efficient for non-conspicuous consumption products (Gierl and Huettl 2010). Therefore, luxury brands, being conspicuous consumption product by nature, are more likely to be perceived highly competed when it is presented as being scarce due to low supply. As such, the following hypotheses are developed: H1. Perceived scarcity do not differ in both scarcity conditions but differ to no scarcity condition H2. Perceived competition differs across scarcity conditions Stimulus-Organism The stimulus, perceived scarcity and competition, influence the Organism, namely perceived value. This relationships are supported by commodity theory, which describes that scarce products have relatively higher value and desirability compared to non-scarce products (Byun & Sternquist, 2012; Lynn, 1991). Further, consumers are more likely to feel a sense of competition when the stores sell unique or scarce items (Aggarwal, Jun, & Huh, 2011). As such, the following hypotheses are developed: H3. Perceived scarcity has a positive influence towards perceived value in all scarcity conditions H4. Perceived competition has a significant influence towards perceived value in all scarcity conditions Organism – Response The internal response, namely the perceived value, influence the response which is the intention to purchase. Numerous studies have found that high perceived value leads to a willingness to buy (Dodds and Monroe 1985; Monroe and Chapman 1987) and purchase (Zeithaml 1988). In this study, the intention to purchase is a representation to measure the aggressive and submissive behaviour. Purchasing the desired brand is considered as an act of aggression while choosing neither handbag or purchasing the alternative brand is seen as an act the submissive behaviour As such, the following hypothesis is developed: H5. Perceived value has a positive influence towards purchase intention of the desired brand compared to alternative brand Methodology Survey Instrument A self-administered pen and paper questionnaire was used for the survey instrument. The measurement used in the study are established scales with Cronbach Alpha higher than 0.8, fulfilling the criteria by Hair et al. (2010). The scales was presented in seven points Likert Scales, in which 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree. Purchase intention, however, is a continuum scale in which option 1 represents a strong intention to buy the mimic brand, 4 accounts for neither mimic nor desired brand, and 7 accounts for a strong intention to buy the desired brand. Experimental Design There are three experimental conditions (scarcity condition: demand-driven; supply-driven; control) between subjects factorial design. To measure the purchase intention of the desired brand, a well-known luxury branding company was selected as the stimuli for the study. The brand, Bottega Veneta, was chosen as the brand is considered as a super-premium brand (Willett 2015) and the pre-test conducted with the University students showed that the brand is well-liked and adored. A non-fictitious brand, De Lux, is also selected to measure intention of purchase of the mimic brand. Each respondent was given two different pamphlets, one of the desired brand with a chosen scarcity condition and another of the mimic brand. Therefore, a total of 8 versions of a retail pamphlet were created (3 scarcity conditions with desired brand + 1 mimic brand x 2 genders). Product description and price information are also included (Lynn 1992). The pamphlets are created as identical as possible across different versions. The signal for supply-driven scarcity was portrayed by phrases and words such as “limited edition; supplies are limited; and unique”; while demand-driven scarcity “popular; bestseller; and highly in demand, almost sold out” (Gierl and Huettl 2010). Data Collections The data were collected from a sampling frame containing undergraduate students at a University in Western Australia. A total of 932 data were collected, but 305 data were discarded. Each respondent must have purchased luxury brands priced more than AUD 1500 within the last 3 years to ensure that the students are luxury consumers. The numbers were set after pre-test was conducted to identify the amount of money spent for luxury brands among the students. Out of 627; 250 students for supply-driven scarcity, 211 students for demand-driven scarcity, and 166 students for control were collected. The respondents had an average age of 20 and were divided into males (36%) and females (64%). Results and discussion One way ANOVA was conducted to compare means across different experimental conditions in terms of the perceived competition and scarcity (H1, H2). The result shows that there is a significant difference between perceived scarcity across experimental conditions. Luxury brands with “nearly sold out” scarcity cue (M = 5.49, SD = 1.19) are seen to be scarcer compared to luxury brands with “limited edition” scarcity cue (M = 4.92, SD = 1.16). Furthermore, luxury brand with no scarcity cue (M = 3.34, SD =1.4) is perceived to be not as scarce as the other two experimental conditions. On the other hand, although there is significant difference between the control condition (M = 2.7, SD = 1.40) and the two experimental conditions, there is no significance difference between “limited edition” scarcity cue (M = 3.99, SD = 1.58) and “nearly sold out” scarcity cue (M = 4.12, SD = 1.61). Therefore, H1 and H2 are not supported. Structural Equation Modelling was used to test model fit across different experimental conditions (H3, H4, H5). The final model revealed very good fit indices with the empirical covariances, as it fits the recommended criteria (Hair et al 2010): Normed Chi Square = 1.007, RMSEA = 0.004, AGFI = 0.940, GFI = 0.959, CFI = 0.990. The model shows that there is no significance relationship between perceived scarcity and perceived value in all 3 experimental conditions (limited edition β= 0.03, p = 0.735; nearly sold out β = -0.10, p = 0.244; control β = 0.09, p = 0.315). However, as hypothesised, there is a positive relationship between perceived competition and perceived value in all 3 experimental conditions (limited edition β = 0.43, p < 0.001; nearly sold out β = 0.57, p < 0.001; control β = 0.57, p < 0.001). In turn, in all 3 experimental conditions, there is a positive relationship between perceived value and purchase intention (limited edition β = 0.18, p = 0.030; nearly sold out β = 0.23, p = 0.014; control β = 0.45, p < 0.001). Therefore, H3 is not supported but H4 and H5 are supported. The findings demonstrate that different scarcity cues create a different level of perceived scarcity, in which “nearly sold out” are seen to be the scarcest, followed by “limited edition”, and no scarcity cues. However, instead of perceived scarcity, perceived competition is the important factor that affects the perception of luxury brands value. This can be explained as perceived competition creates a cue to consumers that the product is desirable by many yet only a handful can get the product. This is consistent with the statement by Verhallen (1982). The results also show that perceived value leads to positive purchase intention of the desired brands in all scarcity conditions. Surprisingly, the finding suggests that the relationship is strongest when there are no scarcity cues, followed with “nearly sold out” and “limited edition”. This can be explained due to a few reasons: (1) limited edition products are perceived to be more expensive (Chen and Sun 2013), (2) the respondents may not be leaders in purchasing luxury brands hence prefer to buy the normal or popular luxury brands to follow the crowd (Amaldoss and Jain 2008), (3) there are other variables, such as, self-efficacy and personality traits which are not taken into account. Conclusion This study contributes in several ways to the body of literature. Firstly, it extends the theory of agonistic behaviour from biology to marketing. By using agonistic behaviour as the underpinned theory, the study takes into consideration the option of consumers being submissive and prefer not to purchase the desired brands. Secondly, this study includes perceived competition as one of the main variable to analyse consumer behaviour towards luxury brands. Methodologically, the application of non-fictitious brands helps to capture real consumers’ response. Managerially, this study provides insights to luxury brands marketers on how to manage scarcity cues. Firstly, luxury brands marketers should develop strategies to strengthen the exclusivity and scarce image as currently normal luxury brands are not perceived as being scarce. The strategies may include to (1) limit the distributions channel of the luxury brands; (2) provide limited stock in every retail store to emphasise product scarcity; (3) introduce alternatives (premium brand extension or different product tiers) to consumers, allowing consumers, who are not able to purchase the desired brands, to choose the alternatives. Secondly, luxury brands managers must ensure that the products are desired by many to increase the perceived competition among consumers. Despite contributions, there is some limitation in the study. Firstly, this study used student sample hence future studies should consider using consumer panel to participate in the study. Secondly, there are some variables not taken into account, such as personality factor (self-esteem, status consumption, the need for uniqueness, etc.), self-efficacy, leader vs. followers. In addition, this study focuses on two scarcity conditions (supply-driven and demand driven scarcity cues), luxury brand industry, and public luxury product (handbag). Future studies should look at time-restricted scarcity cues, retailing, and private luxury products (e.g. undergarment). This study also did not measure the actual purchases and different behaviour of aggression when consumers are competing for products. Future studies should observe consumer behaviour during purchase in real time.

Not all celebrity endorsements have been successful on social media. However, our understanding of the effectiveness of luxury brand celebrity endorsement advertising are limited. On the basis of Self-Congruity Theory (Sirgy, 1985), Meaning-Transfer Model (McCracken, 1989), and Match-Up Hypothesis (Kamins, 1990; Kamins & Cupta, 1994), this study investigates whether three components of image congruity (i.e., brand-celebrity, brand-self, celebrity-self) would influence brand attitudes, ad attitudes, and self-brand connection, and subsequently, influence consumer engagement and purchase intentions. This study also tests the moderating role of consumer type (followers vs. unfollowers of the social media brand page) in these relationships. After conducting a series of pretests to select a focal brand and celebrities, responses from 219 US female adults were used to data analysis. The results of structural equation modeling showed that brand-celebrity congruity was positively related to ad attitudes and brand attitudes. Brand-self congruity was positively related to ad attitudes, brand attitudes, and self-brand connection. Self-celebrity congruity was positively related to ad attitudes and self-brand connection but was negatively related to brand attitudes. Ad attitudes were positively related to brand attitudes and engagement intentions but were not related to purchase intentions. Brand attitudes were positively related to engagement intentions and purchase intentions. Self-brand connection was positively related to engagement intentions, and engagement intentions were positively related to purchase intentions. Finally, the results of a multi-group analysis showed that for unfollowers (n=125), ad attitudes were positively related to engagement intentions but brand attitudes were not. On the contrary, for followers (n=94), brand attitudes were positively related to engagement intentions but ad attitudes were not. This study highlights that self-brand connection is the key to cultivating consumer engagement on social media, along with the consumer’s positive attitudes toward the celebrity endorsement ad and the brand per se. If luxury brands wish to interact with their followers and increase their engagement, they need to focus their efforts on improving brand attitudes and self-brand connection through their brand pages. Our findings suggest that celebrity endorsed advertising contributes to creating self-brand relationships (Dwivedi et al., 2016) but it should be considered as a long-term investment.

This study addresses how agency costs influence the sustainability of different types of corporate governance. The luxury fashion brand could spend large sums of money on maintenance of magnificent brand image, thereby increasing the agency cost. On the contrary, the brand may hold down wasteful spending to report a gaudily financial achievement. Agency costs are defined either to vertical costs arising from the relationship between stockholders and managers, or to horizontal costs associated with the potential conflicts between majority and minority stockholders. Agency costs are measured by the value of the principal component. The study conducted regression analysis of each agency cost index, luxury fashion brand dummy and a set of control variables. The findings show that the agency costs of the firms with luxury fashion brand exceed those of control group.

Despite the positive outcomes of brand-consumer interactions on social media documented in the literature, an important question still remains: Are active brand-consumer interactions always beneficial to luxury fashion brands? This study argues that such interactions may undermine the core perceptions of the brands by making consumers feel too close to the brands. Drawing upon construal level theory of psychological distance, the purpose of this study is to examine the negative effects of brand-consumer interactions on perceptions of luxury fashion brands (i.e., social perception, uniqueness perception, quality perception) in a social media context. Two experimental studies were conducted. The purpose of Study 1 was to test the hypothesis that luxury brands, compared to mainstream brands, will be perceived as more psychologically distant and abstract. Study 1 used a 2 (brand category: luxury vs. mainstream) x 2 (brand replicates) mixed-model design in which the brand category was a between-subject factor and the brand replicates were a within-subject factor. Fifty-nine subjects recruited from Amazon MTurk participated in the study. The results of Study 1 revealed that luxury brands are inherently psychologically distant than mainstream brands. The purpose of Study 2 was to test the impact of brand-consumer interactions (i.e., high vs. low) and the mediating role of psychological distance on the three perceptions of luxury brands (i.e., social perception, uniqueness perception, quality perception) on social media. A single factor between-subjects design was used, and a total of 74 participants were recruited from Amazon MTurk. To manipulate the level of consumer-brand interaction (high vs. low), two versions of a luxury brand’s mock Facebook pages were created. For the high interaction condition, the brand responded to consumers’ posts in a friendly way and displayed the images of user photos. For the low interaction condition, the brand did not respond to consumers’ posts and displayed no images of users. As predicted, the results showed that participants indicated lower brand perceptions when the brand’s social media page displayed a high level of interactions than a low level of interactions. Moreover, formality, a measure of psychological distance, partially mediated the relationship between brand-consumer interactions and all the three brand perceptions. The findings of this study provide empirical evidence that active consumer-brand interactions on social media do not necessarily benefit luxury fashion brands, rather they can damage consumer perceptions of the brands. This study provides important implications that luxury fashion brands should maintain a sacred distance on social media; otherwise it will undermine important perceptions of the brands such as status signaling, exclusivity, and quality.

Given the recent modest growth of the personal luxury good market and the urge to face difficulties through innovative brands’ marketing communication strategies, this paper examines the potentialities of tactical associations between luxury fashion brands and furniture design. Results indicate that there can be positive repercussions deriving from luxury fashion brands and furniture design interconnections. In particular, associations with collectable furniture design may help to define and enhance brands’ luxury values whilst providing consumers with innovative and creative luxury brand experiences. Future expectations in this market show a compound annual rate (CAGR) of 3% to 4% through 2020, to just about €280 billion. This is dramatically slower than the past fast growth experienced from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s. In this scenario, luxury fashion managers and marketers must envision new strategies to succeed and surpass competition. In order to be competitive and successful, luxury brand managers must take into account current market dynamics and find pertinent and substantial solutions. This paper shifts its attention to the identification of how in such a difficult scenario different cultural industries can meet in order to mutually enhance their circuits of value. Some studies have demonstrated that in order to meet such new global challenges, luxury fashion firms may discover strategic opportunities in art (Codignola, 2016). Given their symbolic connotation and aesthetic value, high-end furniture design items are more and more perceived as art works exchanged in art auctions or fairs, collected and purchased by collectors, exhibited in galleries or museums. At the same time, furniture design goods show some divergences from conventional art works (i.e. functionality, reproducibility, etc.) and some correspondences with fashion goods. By observing the luxury fashion sector, one may then find--for different sets of reasons--more than one interesting intersection with the furniture design sector. By taking into account the furniture design sector within its specific market features and goods, this paper argues that through furniture design LFBs can develop engaging creative and innovative brands’ marketing communication strategies. Compared to art, such strategies would be able to add value and strengthen LFBs’ luxury features even in a more effective way.

Luxury market is changing with new competitors to the market, more modest growth, and new types of customers (Kim and Ko 2012). To stay relevant, luxury houses need to develop experience-based marketing strategies that emphasise interactivity, connectivity and creativity (Atwal and Williams 2009). Subsequently, with the rise of digital marketing of luxury (Okonkwo 2009), consumers have been granted a more active role in the value co-creation of luxury brands. Indeed, adopting more inclusive and consumer-oriented marketing strategies has proven successful to iconic luxury brands such as Burberry (Phan, Thomas & Heine 2011), and Hermes (Robins 2016). Previously, value co-creation has been studied from consumer perspective following resource-based view (Arnould, Price and Malshe 2006) and practice theory (Schau, Muniz, and Arnould 2009). However, in the field of luxury marketing, research on co-creation has been limited to one case study of value co-creation processes (Tynan, McKechnie & Chhuon 2010). In addition, no previous research exists on the role of space and spectacular environment in value co-creation in luxury. This article extends these streams of researchby analysing 42 narratives (Polkinghorne 1995) from consumers that have attended two branded exhibitions of Louis Vuitton: SERIES3 held in London in the fall 2015 and Volez, Voguez, Voyagez in Paris in Spring 2016. In essence, luxury is about seduction; recreating a dream and providing meaningful, personal experiences for its consumers (Kapferer and Bastien 2009). Here, a branded exhibition provides a way to invite consumers to feel, see, and experience the brand in its full splendour. These encounters, in turn, transform the value-creation logic between the brand and the consumer from a one-way affair to a co-creational relation. This article demonstrates how exhibition context allows the consumer to participate in the value co-creation for Louis Vuitton, a prestigious luxury brand. Here, the brand provides a context and props for the consumer’s processes of value co-creation. This, in turn, then results into four types of value; utilitarian, experiential, relational, and symbolic. The contribution of this study is three-fold. First, this study extends the literature on value co-creation (Arnould et al. 2006) by demonstrating the role of space in the process of value co-creation. Second, our results extend previous research on luxury (Tynan et al. 2010) by illustrating the value co-creation from consumer perspective. From managerial perspective, the results show how brand exhibitions may act as platforms for content creation and enable rich self-expression with the brand.

Effective branding strategy requires systematic management of brand identity and brand image. Brand identity refers to the company’s plan with regard to what associations consumers hold for the brand, whereas brand image refers to the associations consumers actually hold for the brand. According to Aaker (1996), brand identity consists of brand essence, core identity, and extended identity. Brand image, on the other hand, consists of attributes, benefits, and attitudes (Keller, 1993). Given the nature of brand identity and brand image, branding strategy aims to strengthen congruence, but lessen discrepancy among the components. The strategy can be either manipulative or reflective, i.e., changing brand image to correspond with brand identity or changing brand identity to adopt brand image, respectively. Branding strategy of SPA (Specialty Store Retailer of Private Label Apparel: i.e., fast fashion) brands is not an exception. However, SPA brands are characterized as quick response production capabilities with enhanced design capabilities to produce "hot" products that capture the latest consumer trends and exploit minimal production lead times to match supply with uncertain demand (Cachon & Swinney, 2011). Consequently, branding strategy of SPA brands is expected to be more reflective than manipulative. The primary purpose of this study is to verify the expectation, analyzing the branding strategy of the big 3 SPA brands: ZARA, Uniqlo, and H&M. All being SPA brands, the big 3 brands still need to differentiate from the competitors. From the perspective of this study, the differentiation strategy is expected to be manifested in the components of brand image to reflect, i.e., more emphasis on the reflection of attributes, benefits, or attitudes. Accordingly, this study also examines how the details of branding strategy differ among the big 3 SPA brands in this regard.

This paper attempts to bring the rather dated concept of Cultural Capital (CC) from the sociology literature to luxury retailing; it argues that Visual Merchandise Display (VMD) can enhance the consumers’ intentions to purchase luxury brands but this influence is stronger for consumers with higher CC than for those with lower CC. In particular, we develop a psychometric scale to measure CC and empirically and quantitatively investigate in two experiments the impact of VMD on consumer purchase intentions and the moderating role of CC. Walking first into TK Maxx and then into Harvey Nichols, one could assume that brand perceptions are affected not by the merchandise but rather by the store environment and particularly the way in which the products are visually presented to the consumers. In 2013, Karen Miller announced a substantial remodelling of its stores, including a change in their look to communicate ‘affordable luxury’ (Felsted, 2013). Although the luxury marketers seem to understand the importance of the display in influencing consumer perceptions, academics yet admit to knowing very little about the role of visual merchandising and display on the mechanisms of luxury brand consumption (Joy, Wang, Chan, Sherry, & Cui, 2014). Emerging research in the luxury retailing literature focuses on and explores qualitatively the role of ‘museological’ product presentation techniques in building and sustaining a luxury brand image (Dion & Arnould, 2011; Joy et al., 2014). However, till now, it has not considered that people can differ in their ability (i.e., ‘connoisseurship’) to decode and appreciate such display techniques, which often require substantial investment in fixtures, expensive materials, or complicated designs or architecture. This paper argues that the success of many newly introduced marketing communication techniques, including the tendency of contemporary branding to ‘subtly’ communicate the understated cleverness of a brand, can be subject to the consumers’ level of CC. CC refers to human culture and constitutes an individual characteristic that encompasses consumer’s intangible cultural assets and resources, such as knowledge, personality traits, and values, which manifest via consumers’ lifestyle choices and affect the way they think and act (Bourdieu, 1984; Blackwell, Miniard, & Engel, 2001). We argue that in luxury retailing, where ‘brand museums’ (Hollenbeck, 2008), ‘museological’ product presentation techniques or simply ‘museum like displays’ (Joy et al., 2014) and collaboration with contemporary artists and creative directors (Dion and Arnould, 2011) have been pointed out as new formats of in-store communication, CC can play a crucial role in explaining whether and how much consumers’ purchases can be actually affected. The marketing literature, to date, however, misses a contemporary continuous measure to assess consumers’ CC. In their effort to avoid limitations embedded in prior conceptualisations of CC— which mostly concern its supposed static and inherited nature (McQuarrie, Miller, & Phillips, 2013) —, many studies of consumer behaviour tend to assess CC qualitatively and set criteria to dichotomise a sample into two groups who are somewhat arbitrarily classified as people with either high or low CC; or, they only approximate CC by assessing the participants’ knowledge in a specific field of consumption, which is often a crude proxy for CC and pre-supposes the consumers’ interest-involvement in the investigated field of consumption (McQuarrie et al., 2013). For example, the literature on luxury brands tends to replace CC with fashion knowledge (e.g., Berger & Ward, 2010). Nevertheless, the researchers recognise this replacement as a limitation of their studies and a poor operationalisation of the concept of CC (Berger & Ward, 2010). The present research has three objectives. First, rather than dichotomising people into high and low CC groups, it acknowledges CC as a continuous variable and develops a contemporary psychometric scale to measure the extent to which people within the same culture differ in it. Second, it aims to provide a conceptual framework for understanding a set of mechanisms that explain how consumers’ purchase intentions for a luxury brand can be affected by specific VMD cues which are used for displaying it. Last and more importantly, we want to validate the newly introduced scale in a final experiment that tests whether the process whereby VMD indirectly increases the purchase intentions for luxury brands, depends positively on the consumer’s CC. The first study, which incorporates a qualitative inquiry as well as a purification and a validation study and uses multiple samples, succeeds in developing and validating a psychometric CC scale. In the second study, by conducting an experiment, we develop a model which explains how a combination of specific high-image VMD cues that form a museum-like display affects the consumers’ luxury brand purchase intentions by increasing consumers’ perceptions of luxury and by decreasing their perceived personal risk. This study’s model is, then, re-estimated in the final study after introducing into it the measure of CC. In this experiment, the strength of the basic relationships was found to be contingent on CC, suggesting that consumers with higher CC tend to be more strongly influenced by the store environment cues. Although we recognise that for many consumer behaviour studies in the marketing literature, consumers’ knowledge in fashion represents sufficiently well the concept of CC (e.g., Berger & Ward, 2010; McQuarrie et al., 2013; Parmentier, Fischer, & Reuber, 2013), we show that this might not be the case in the context of store atmospherics. In particular, we test the influence of both CC and fashion knowledge by introducing them together into the same model. Interestingly, CC is found to behave differently and to some extent oppositely to fashion knowledge in influencing consumers’ store-induced perceptions and purchase intentions for the luxury brand on display. The identification of specific VMD cues that form what the luxury retailing literature rather vaguely describes as a ‘museological presentation’ and the measurement of their combined effect as a ‘museum-like display’ on the consumer’s perceptions and behavioural intentions can have important implications for both the offline and online retailers. Our findings can also inform the contemporary brand communication methods, such as the brand’s representation in social media (e.g., in pinterest). Moreover, the measurement of consumer’s level of CC can allow brand managers and retailers to identify receptive segments and make more efficient resource commitments to VMD. Investment in VMD elements can then be better matched to the anticipated target market to avoid either over- or under spending on it. Sales forecasts can also become more accurate if CC could be assessed and considered along with the employed in-store and digital product presentation methods.

Despite its innovative and avant-garde reputation, the luxury industry initially began showing a very low commitment to new online marketing tools and it held a conservative approach to selling when compared to other sectors. Nowadays, the context has dramatically changed and luxury brands are approaching with an increasing interest social networks as well as the online selling. This research aims to clarify the current strategic approaches of the players in the different luxury markets towards the social commerce phenomenon, from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. The purpose is to test a framework that can be used to classify luxury companies’ strategies regarding social media adoptions based on actual theories on social media. Four strategies related to the social media adoption by luxury brands have been identified: the Social brand ambassadors strategy class (low promotional content percentage and low social commerce score) includes those brands that use social media for entertainment and user engagement; the Social showcases strategy (high promotional content percentage and low social commerce score) includes those brands that use their social accounts as online catalogues; the Social infotainers strategy (low promotional content percentage and high social commerce score) includes those brands that scored high in social commerce, mainly because of the provision of informative content and brand–consumer interactions, but they were linked to more entertainment-oriented actions rather than product-related ones. Finally, the Social sellers strategy (high promotional content percentage and high social commerce score) includes those brands that have integrated social commerce into their online strategies and have subsequently exploited the potential of social media to drive online and offline sales. The database is built using original data from a content analysis of 100 luxury brands’ postings on five different social media platforms – namely Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest. The total final sample included 12,132 Facebook posts, 21,216 tweets on Twitter, 1,105 YouTube videos, 10,138 Instagram pictures/videos, and 117,359 Pinterest pictures. The main findings are the following: luxury brands adopt at this stage the Social brand ambassadors and Social showcases approaches; brands belonging to the perfumery, cosmetics, jewelry and watches markets show a more developed attitude towards the social commerce; in other luxury markets, such as wine and spirits, brands still adopt a Social Brand Ambassador strategy, while managers should increase the promotional content in order develop the social commerce. The Fashion & Accessories brands show a positive relationship between the percentage of promotional content and social commerce score. This means that social commerce adoptions depend on the single brand’s strategic choices, ranging from low adoption to best practices. In general, social commerce is still not widespread; many luxury fashion brands, while presenting new collections during fashion weeks, focused on fashion shows, backstage events, and celebrities, rather than really promoting the new product lines with materials, availability, and purchasing indications. This social media approach is mainly focused on increasing brand awareness rather than increasing social commerce. If managers aim at increasing social commerce they should add direct call to action and link the contents to e-commerce market place. Automotive brands are concentrated in the Social showcases area; This sector encounters natural limitations in the introduction of social commerce due to the difficulty of selling products through the digital channel; many brands have, however, devised strategies to approach their users during the purchasing process prior to the actual transaction to take advantage of the increasing ROPO phenomenon. Conversely, the Perfumes & Cosmetics sector shows a highly fragmented approach to social commerce. The content analysis based on single post contents has shown that actually the contents are based on pictures of the products, or the brand, information on events, and a large and increasing presence of video posts based storytelling about the history of the product and the brand heritage; the most social commerce oriented posts are picture or video focused on the product. The commercial contents that aim at developing the see now, buy now approach are mainly based on video shows.

As the branding process is intertwined with already existing culturally conditioned conceptions, fundamental cultural processes in a society might affect the attraction of a specific brand. This means that trends of ethical or political fashions influence the popularity of brands and how they are recognized. In his seminal book Brand Society, Martin Kornberger argues that “brands have brought about a new way of living a life: the ubiquitous, pervasive yet little analyzed notion of lifestyle encapsulates brands’ power to quite literally stylize life”. He points to three influential elements—he calls them a troika—provides a basis for this analysis. These are Politics, Ethics and Aesthetics. (Kornberger, 2010) I will here propose a fourth, namely stories, tales, and that which lies behind these, modes of understanding, you might even want to call it a sentiment. I hope to show that such stories (sentiments) take on the form of ideas and thus can have profound political implications, if not to say that they have ideological origins and in this way far-reaching consequences, the effects on brands and the use of attire coupled to them just being one. This fourth element I prefer to call simply Sentiment, even though feeling would probably be just as appropriate or even Thought-trends. Ideology could be another possible term, but this is really an outcome rather than a good term in and of itself for what I intend to show. Yet another possibility would be to use the term Myth, then of course with reference to Barthes myth-concept. (Barthes, 1997) His concept has to do with self-descriptions, mainly focusing on national sentiments and self-understandings of what it might mean to be for instance French or British, Barthes exemplifies by referring to concrete manifestations such as the Eiffel Tower or Five o’clock tea, answers to questions like ’Who are we?’ or ‘How do people like us live?’. These are national myths based on some sort of ethnical factor, living-space if you will. This is however not what I’m focusing on, rather under-currents to thinking of another sort. So I’ll just stick with Sentiments for the time being To show this, I will take help of a specific case and in so doing focus on its position in the late 60-ties and early 70-ties. The case accordingly focuses on how the brand Fjällräven has been acknowledged as having varying political, ethical and fashionable positioning over decades. The case is compared to another related brand within the outdoor equipment-slash-fashion industry, Haglöfs. Possibly a lesser known brand and this have its explanations as will be seen. One aspect of this sentiment is stories; if the sentiment manifests itself as a kind of self-understanding in terms of self-stories, tales of oneself and of one’s history, then stories is a facet of the sentiment. The term stories might imply storytelling, a term lately frequently used to denote a marketing tool within something in practical marketing coined content marketing. By this one might mean marketing that is not primarily targeted at conveying a simple message pertaining to a customer need or want, rather at building trustworthiness in an attempt to relate to customers sense of belonging or search for ideas and suggestions—the helpful company with a legitimate history and position in society. Storytelling has been the subject of many books, both textbooks and consultancy literature, Brown, (2004), Mossberg & Nissen Johansen (2006), Thier (2006), to name but a few. Content marketing is not that novel an idea as Pulizzi (2012) contends, it has been around for for hundreds of years. His exampel is John Deere and the compay’s strive to educate its customers in how to use equipment. Another example would be Jell-O and their recipies in the early 20th century. Another aspect of storytelling might be the so called corporate narrative, this phenomenon has been analyzed by many, Barbara Czarniawska (1997, 2005, 2009) to name but one. She even makes an interesting connection between corporate storytelling and novels, as well as referring storytelling to leadership. In this sence stories and storytelling is not just marketing, it is also part of an organizations inner workings, as leadership and the (possibly co-) creation of a shared identity; it is stories of the self and stories that would contextualize and explain the position of the self, thus pertaining to sentimets, also of course to explain and rationalize the actions taken within the actual context that is described by these stories, hence they are can be seen as manifestations of a mental selfportrait. The idea of realization of actions motivated by and pertaining to stories and storytelling in organization and marketing has also been analyzed by Rehnberg (2014) from a linguistic viewpoint, using Fjällräven as an exampel for the analysis. She of course has a much greater scope for her analysis than just actions, but it is one of her vital points. Stories in her sense can be of two kinds, Strategic stories and Common stories, the difference being that Strategic stories are stories that are created by a commercial actor. She talks of stories as chains of text, texts that are stories can be consecutively constructed, an obvious example being blogg texts. These texts develop a story, further Rehnberg points out that they in themselves are inscribed in stories: stories contextualize stories so to speak. These contextualizing stories she calls meta-stories, stories that remain weak in their explicitness, yet strong in their impact. Invisible in details yet most visible in society, both as self-understanding of what’s importante and as self-descriptions of the social, even models for explanations. One might come to think about Lyotard and his pivotal work La Condition Postmodern. Lyotards critizises the idea of mega-stories and talks about small, maybe even local, stories. (Lyotard, 1984) A Lyotardian mega-story is one that pertains to the whole society, in a sense claims to explain everything in society, a story that tells a bout developlemnt and societal focus and strive; it explains our moment in history and what we are as a society. Lyotard maintains that these stories more or less has outlived themselves. This is what he calls the postmodern condition. Knowledge then has to be construed in other terms than in something under the umbrellla of such a mega-story, somewhat holistic, i.e. understod in terms of a whole system rather than as disconected units or propositions. His critique can be said to be directed towards ideas that has come to be expressed by people such as the 19th century philosophers and pedagogue Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) and, the better known, John Dewey (1859-1952), and possibly also, at least in an idirect way, the italian philosopher Gianbatista Vico (1668-1744). But in the course of progression of this text, I hope it will be clear that the ideas of these three very influencial, or semi-influencial, philosophers, are not totally consistant with each other even though they share some similarities on some level. And of course, that at the point where they share simlarities, they also help to explain the case of Fjällräven. The American pragmatist John Dewey is one of the heavily influential philosophers during the 19th and 20th centuries. He can be said to represent a very dominant strain of thought that has its roots in 18th century enlightenment. One early forerunner within the field of pedagogy is the now since long forgotten Herbert Spencer. The strain of thought these philosophers represent can be coined progressivist. The idea within this thought model is that improvement is possible through knowledge, a kind of optimism when it comes to society and human effort to improve its living conditions, and being in the world. But knowledge should and must be rooted in empirical observations. In this way, the study of scripture would not lead to knowledge, at least not of the world in which we live. A boy or a girl (depending if you follow Dewey or Spencer) reaches knowledge of the empirical world when confronted with it. The world poses the problems, and the boy or girl looks for solutions to these problems. The problems occur when ambitions to do things are limited in some way, the problem is to overcome these limitations, in this way the solutions have a two-pronged grounding: in part in the empirical, in part in the personal. It is driven by personally experienced limitations, and by empirical observations. The same is true of science, Dewey maintains, and in this way all knowledge-seeking activities. The ideal is the tailor, the cabinetmaker and the shoemaker: the craftsman, in short. Knowledge is within the world and about the world. The outcome of knowledge is better a living-in-the-world and a better life for the living people, thus knowledge is part of the improvement of life for human beings, for society as a whole, if you will. This progressivist mentality is linked to society and everything in it and thus to brands that accordingly resonates the progressivist sentiments and hopes so that the brand of Fjällräven can be said to be an example of progression in this progressivist tradition. I’ll come back to this later, and show how this is possible. I have earlier mentioned Giambattista Vico (1664-1744), an Italian philosopher and educator. Contrary to Dewey and Spencer, he describes the development of society in terms of stories resonating in society. Now, one might say that this is just what the progressivist sentiment is, a story, a tale if you will, of progression and improvement. This sentiment has very much been the guide of political judgement (an apparent example is Swedish Government Official Reports, this manner of preparing decisions is not uncommon elsewhere either, as far as I know) and pedagogy, where students are urged to find out for themselves, ideas of individualized learning, problem based learning (PBL) and more. The idea at the core of these methodologies are in all cases that student’s lust for learning and problem solving is vital for learning. Problem solving and invention is hailed, whilst repetitious repeating of authoritative commandments is unsolicited; progression is also a questioning of authorities, sometimes anyway. So if the progressivist sentiment is a story told, or rather untold but communicated throughout society, it still drives action and strategic choices, and it still is what it is not supposed to be. It is in effect a Lyotardian mega-story, and also a Rehnbergian. Gianbatista Vico argues that a society develops its understanding of itself and its mentality in terms of story about itself in three phases, the divine, the heroic and the human. The three phases are characterized by three different approaches to knowledge and truth. The first rather primitive phase, Divine, is characterized by an equation of empirical phenomenon with divine phenomenon. Comprehension is driven by Poetry, Phantasy and Metaphysics, and so builds the basis for construing the world. The metaphor is characterizing this stage, in that the world is described in divine terms that they themselves represent rather than present, it is what it is not. The second phase according to Vico is the Heroic. It is described as idealization, institutions are feudal, the central figure of speech is the metonym that one stands for all, the king for the county. Society will be embodied by class difference. The third stage Vico calls the Human phase. Irony and rationalism are characterizing factors, democracy and general laws, too. The phases can appear a trifle optimistic if they are seen as consecutive, which is what I think Vico suggests. The important idea that I want to hold on to here is not the phases progressiveness taken as a whole, rather what they contain by themselves. Vico's thesis is that truth exists as a consequence of forms of understanding, in the text, in the sentiments condensed into stories and understandings resonating within society. This idea I want to use to explain why the progressivist sentiments can be said to resonate by and with a brand as a token re-presentative re-verbarating, i.e. re-stating, the story resonating in a society: a story or rational knowledge-seeking in order to enhance welfare and ease endeavors, solve problems we encounter and make life a smoother and more efficient ride. With reference to Umberto Eco, Martin Kornberger points out that an author seldom, if ever, has any control over the interpretations of their work. This idea has also been put forward by Paul Ricoeur. This means that the talk, the communicated ideas, the re-verberation if you will, has a greater impact on the meaning of a work than the work itself, the work itself being one of the factors influencing the meaning creating process but not the only. The meaning creating process thus becomes an ever ongoing socially contingent process rather than a stable, once and for all, established fact. Transferred to the field of brands, as Kornberger does, the idea is that brands resonate in society, and they resonate ideas that people have, individuals and collectives. Marcel Danesi voices a similar idea when he affirms that advertising that is in some sense or another successful always resonates with something outside of the brand meaning itself. (Danesi, 2008) An intertextual connection to societal factors. If this is true, then brands resonate not just in an individual sense with individual co-creators, but also in a collective sense with ideas rather than individuals, individuals being the carriers, vehicles if you will, of meaning that co-create meaning but the long term intertextual factors needs to be taken into account. If this is so, then Fjällräven would be a case in point and, further, intertextuality does not need to be communicated explicitly, it is still present, like progressivism is present and thus would influence the meaning construct of a brand, and consequently its sense of significance, value, for want of a better word. The progressivist sentiment becomes an actor in itself that is involved in the co-authoring of brand meaning. Let me now turn to Fjällräven. Fjällräven first saw daylight in 1960. It was commenced by Åke Nordin as a cellar company sewing outdoor equipment of his own design, selling it locally. In less than ten years he had built a company that produced all sorts of equipment, although his original product were rucksacks. These rucksacks had for the time a novel design in the sense that this design was first offered in a commercial situation by Fjällräven. Åke Nordin had built his own carrying-frames and sewn his own sacks to go with the frame himself. The design with frames that one can lash one’s carrying-load onto was of course not new, what was new was Fjällräven’s applications and commercialization of the concept. At the time another outdoor-equipment supplier was very well established on the Swedish market, Haglöfs. In 1914 the entrepreneur Wiktor Haglöf started the self-named business. He began his business in a very similar way to Åke Nordin, by selling rucksack of his own make, primarily to local farmers and loggers. The Haglöf business grew as his rucksacks were perceived as modern and would meet high demands on quality in the wear and tear of the logger’s and farmer’s hard work. The rucksacks of the Haglöf make were even chosen by the Swedish army and used well into the 70-ties. The Haglöf rucksacks were robust and heavy. One voiced from the time—early 70-ties—stated that if you wanted a rucksack to last forever, then you should choose a Haglöfs. But if you wanted something sleek, slender and light-weight, then Fjällräven would be the preferred the choice. The thing that is voiced here is significant in more than one way, I think. First, a quality argument is not always sustainable. Second, what is perceived as ‘the best’ is not always obvious. Third, success breeds success in a very specific fashion. What is put forward is the choice between a quality condition and something else, what this something else is, is not exactly clear, more of a feeling than something apparent and markedly substantial in a tangible respect. Except maybe for the weight-factor, which can be interpreted in quite another direction, light-weight meaning fragile, even delicate. In fact, the voice hinted in that direction by supplementing the assessment by saying that if one would venture to drop the Haglöfs rucksack from way up high onto a hard surface it would sustain the fall and still be in a usable state. It was thus maintained that that would not be the case with a rucksack of a Fjällräven make. So one might think that any rational ourdoorer (hiker or backpacker) would pick the rucksack with the most likelihood to sustain harsh conditions as the Swedish army in those days did, but that is not so, not in all cases anyway, since the Fjällräven rucksack with its concept of a frame onto which the actual sacks were fastened. The concept was, at least for some, obviously more important than durability. But another explanation is possible to, as I see it, and that explanation has to do with fashion: it was more fashionable for some people to carry your things in a Fjällräven rucksack than in a Haglöfs. If this is true then this fashionablity needs explaining, and it is precisely here that the tell-tale stories plays vital role. During the 19th and 20th centuries a strong undercurrent was the progressivist sentiment: progress, strive for discoveries, inventions, the future is the important age—past is bygones—political inventions to better society, social inventions to better life, inventions in the field of technology, interventions to improve individuals as well as collectives (“A future to believe in”, a phrase presently used by one of the contenders to the presidency of the United States of America, the leftist candidate). Fjällräven presented such an invention that intervened in the life of backpackers as well as outdoorers, the hikers of the time. The invention was the fashionable, the progressive—the political if you will—that bettered life. This progressiveness was the social wave that Fjällräven could surf on and it became the wave of success for Fjällräven that the firm still seems to surf on. Haglöfs was left behand, and possibly still is. The invention was not first and foremost a technological invention as an instance in the tale of progress; a social re-verberation to allude to the Danesian concept of synergy. Following Danesi, a valid story is a story that has the ability to attract sentiment, a story that will inscribe and make sense in terms of a synergetic effect. If the undercurrent is progressivism and that sentiment rationalizes Fjällräven and their offering to users of rucksacks in terms of a story of progression, then that would account for the position Fjällräven got, and, at least to a degree, still retain.

The purpose of this study is to investigate symbolic consumption of fashion global brands and its relation to the self. This work adopts a qualitative approach and the “tripartite model of self” (Brewer & Yuki, 2007) to study brand meaning among consumers in two different cultural settings: UK and Colombia. Findings show how some meanings change among groups, addressing different self-identity needs, motivations and tensions. This work contributes to debates around international marketing strategies.

Emerging Asian markets such as China and India have drawn tremendous attention to marketing and consumer researchers in the past decades (e.g., Cayla & Eckhardt, 2008; Dong & Tian, 2009). The increasing purchasing power of the new middle-class Asian consumers attracted not only global brands but also local brands from the region. Previous studies on Asian consumers found that consumers are actively using Western brands to construct their modern or global identities (e.g., Dong & Tian, 2009). Other studies explored how regional or local brands redefine themselves in both regional and transnational markets (Cayla & Eckhardt, 2008; Wu, Borgerson & Schroeder, 2013). In this study, we employed a cultural approach (Cayla & Arnould, 2008) to examine how Asian brands mythicize themselves in the global marketplace through various storytelling and myth-making strategies. We compare and contrast the mythology and storytelling strategies (Boje, 1995; Lundqvist, Liljander, Gummerus & van Riel, 2013; Vincent, 2001) employed by three Asian consumer electronic brands, Samsung (South Korea), Sony (Japan), and Xiaomi Technology (China) and report our key findings in the following sections. In marketing literature, brand is defined as “name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those other sellers” by the American Marketing Association (Keller, 2013, p. 2). In recently years, brands have been viewed as an integral part of contemporary popular culture (Cayla & Arnould, 2008; Hancock, 2009, 2013; Holt, 2004, 2006; Klein, 2001; Moor, 2007). Brands, like other cultural artefacts such as folklore, dance, songs, and costumes, have significant impact on shaping consumers’ everyday lives and influence on how they define their world

The market distribution channels has changed from single to multi-channels due to the diffusion of digital development products. In addition the new consumption emergence has been applied in showrooming and reverse-showrooming. One of well-known shopping district in South Korea, Dongdaemun, has been introduced Dongdaemun-based fashion brand which use on/offline multi-channel distribution. This study aims to segment multi-channel attributes of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands and analyse the effects of customer equity attributes, customer satisfaction, and re-purchase intention. The goals of this study are as follows: 1) to identify multi-channel attributes of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands, 2) to analyse the influence of multi-channel attributes on customer equity, customer satisfaction, and repurchase intention, 3) to explore the consumer group differences on shopping orientation. This study applied means-end chain theory to conduct in-depth interviews for the purpose of deriving the multi-channel attributes of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands and explore the influence of such attributes on customer equity, customer satisfaction, and re-purchase intention. This study collected 493 samples and structural equation modeling was used for final data analysis. The main findings of this study are as follows. The multi-channel attributes have a significant impact on value equity and brand equity. Relationship equity is influenced by product diversity, entertainment, and informativeness. The all of customer equity drivers have significantly impacts on repurchase intention and only brand equity have significant effect on repurchase intention. Also, customer satisfaction affects re-purchase intention. Brand equity have a significant influence on CLV. The consumers group differ in how consumers recognize multi-channel attributes of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands, based on channel preference. This study shows the importance of customer equity and suggests long-term implications for the development of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands.

The market for environmentally friendly or ‘green’ products has increased substantially over the last ten years (Willer and Kilcher, 2010). Both brand manufacturers and retailers are increasingly, and successfully, incorporating environmental and social issues in their brands (Aouina Mejri and Bhatli, 2014; Chkanikova and Lehner, in press; Gleim et al., 2013). Given the increasing importance of ‘green’ branding, the current study examines the role of key drivers (i.e., brand equity, store image and product familiarity) in the consumption of green brands. Moreover, since previous studies found that positive evaluations of a specific brand led to more positive buying behavior for the green product concept in general (Bartels and Hoogendam, 2011), in the current study we also assess the impact of these key drivers on green consumption in general. Finally, by explicitly distinguishing between store brands and national brands, we try to determine whether these relationships differ between these two types of brands in a green context. To test these effects, we used a panel study among consumers in Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.S.. For each country, we used one national brand and one or two store brands. Respondents randomly received one of these brands to evaluate. This process resulted in 404 respondents for store brands and 302 respondents for national brands. Results show that store image and brand equity have a direct effect on the consumption of green store brands and green national brands. In addition, we found that for both store and national brands, the relationship between brand equity and green brand consumption is partially mediated by the perceived image of the store where that brand is sold. Furthermore, for national brands, a positive store image also leads to an increase in green consumption behavior in general, which is not the case for store brands. Finally, for national brands, there is a clear relationship between product familiarity and brand consumption, whereas this is not the case for store brands.