Introduction
The fashion business is known as one of the major industries that is suffering from rising concerns about the consumption of its product, which led to a reorganization of the fashion supply chain to become more sustainable three decades ago. The interest in the concept of sustainability and demand for sustainable marketing activities is gradually growing in the fashion industry due to the negative image and press it receives. Within the luxury fashion segment, the three main themes that are recognized to contribute to sustainability are exclusivity, craftmanship and limited production. However, luxury brands are increasingly shifting their attention and commitment towards environmental and social issues to be incorporated in the concept of sustainability. Yet, the majority of consumers has little understanding or misunderstands the concept of sustainable fashion and marketing, which leads to a gap between attitudes towards sustainability and actual behavior. As a result, fashion brands are trying to leverage their brand by making sustainability a key marketing strategy to raise awareness about social, environmental, economic and cultural issues. Extant research has not explored this recent trend to understand how consumers evaluate fashion brands with a sustainable marketing communication, especially in the context of luxury brands. This study investigates how luxury and mass fashion brands can utilize sustainable marketing contents in social media communication to reach their target group and enhance their equity with sustainability associations.
Theoretical Development
Associative network models of memory have served as a fundamental framework for a wide range of studies related to the formation and transfer of associations. According to associative network theory, brand knowledge is represented in form of an associative network of memory nodes connected to each other. Nodes are activated when cues, such as advertising, are presented. Mere exposure to cues was shown to be sufficient to active associations and facilitate association transfer. While brands are continuously attempting to make use of associative power to leverage brand equity, extant research has provided compelling reasons to accept that association transfer can also result in brand dilution when a retrieval of conflicting or negative associations occurs. Especially in the context of luxury brands consisting of very unique associations and being different from mass brands in many regards, managing the brand’s associative network is a crucial task in order to send the right signals to consumers and maintain exclusivity. This study investigates how social media communication of different sustainability dimensions affects brand attitude and how it ultimately impacts behavioral outcomes in an attempt to build brand equity for mass and luxury fashion brands.
Method and Data
The hypotheses are tested with 273 respondents who participated in an online experiment. They were first asked to state their involvement with the category fashion. Subsequently, subjects were presented with a brand post either for the mass or luxury brand including claims related to one of the four sustainability dimensions or no claims for the control group respectively. The experiment consisted of a 2 (brand: mass or luxury) x 5 (sustainability dimensions: none, cultural, economic, environmental, social) factorial design. The measures that followed included attitudinal as well as behavioral constructs related to the brand, sustainability as well as social media use. Analysis of covariance is applied to test for main effects and interaction effects.
Summary of Findings
This study provides evidence that social media communication of a sustainable brand affects the purchase intention of consumers. The findings indicate a significant difference between the mass and the luxury brand used for this study. The mass brand exhibits the potential to leverage associations with cultural, economic, and environmental sustainability. However, the results only reveal a marginally significant higher purchase intention when cultural sustainability is communicated compared to when the brand does not provide any sustainable associations. In contrast, the luxury brand suffers from significant brand dilution across all four sustainability dimensions resulting in a decline in purchase intention.
Key Contributions
The findings reveal that sustainability communication exerts a diverging influence depending on the type of brand that is involved. This study suggests that mass brands are able to benefit from sustainability communication in an attempt to leverage brand equity. However, for a luxury brand this type of associations rather presents a liability that might dilute the brand. The findings of this study provide important insights for brand managers. Since mass brands are currently increasing efforts into sustainable communication in the fashion industry, the results suggest that this might be a promising investment. However, luxury brands are advised to carefully manage the communication of salient content related to sustainability as it might harm the invaluable and unique associations inherent in a luxury brand.
Western social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, etc are banned in China. In their places, Weibo, WeChat, Youku and more are the main social media channels in China and thus the main battlefields of social marketing for brands entering China Market. WeChat is the largest social network in China, with over 900 million users daily, for nearly all types of services, including booking flights, restaurant table reservation, shopping, paying bills, etc. To cater the needs of the new generation of Chinese digital natives, a mobile app eM++ was developed that creates new customer services and enables tailored fashion marketing. This new mobile app eM++ works well in China, will this be also well received in other countries? This research investigates consumers’ perception of this new fashion e-tailoring e-shopping concept in UK. Will this type of e-tailored services be welcome in UK? Will consumers welcome this type of e-shopping service in UK? Or they prefer the traditional way of tailoring and shopping? Which social media platforms should be used for promotion? The sample population of this research covers both male and females from China and UK aged 18 years old or above with experience of searching and/or buying clothing items online. Convenient sampling and snow-balling sampling methods are used. In UK, recruitment of volunteers for this project will be via emails to colleagues and previous students, as well as via posters of recruiting volunteers for this project posted on campus. Details of the project and experiment will be included in both emails and posters. Volunteered participants are asked to answer a pre-experiment online questionnaire. Based on their answers, suitable participants will be invited to participate the experimental part (which is trying a fashion app and then answer the post-experiment questionnaire). Participants successfully completed the experiment and post-experiment questionnaire will be given their own body measurements with a 3D model in user’s customised shape, as well as a discount coupon for future use when the app is officially launched. This research will have mainly quantitative data analysis, SPSS will be used to analyse the data. There will have a few open-ended questions that qualitative data analysis method will be employed. This research will explore the feasibility of this service in UK and formulate a cross-cultural comparison between China and UK.
This research aims at analyzing the role of digital technologies for communication in
the personalization of cultural heritage visitors’ experience and the potential of such
technologies in valorizing cultural heritage sites. In order to explore such a
phenomenon through a pilot study, a conceptual framework has been developed in the
attempt to better conceptualize the modern notion of digital cultural heritage. The
theoretical foundations are experiential marketing (Schmitt, 1999), authenticity in
visitors’ experience (Neuhofer et al., 2014), and engineering studies on successful
application of technologies in cultural heritage sites (Sparacino, 2004). From the
proposed conceptual framework some relevant insights have emerged. In particular,
main findings deal with digital technologies being characterized by three particular
kinds of artificial intelligence, namely (a) perceptive intelligence, (b) interactive
intelligence, and (c) narrative intelligence. Specifically, perceptive intelligence allows
a digital technology to seize visitors’ movements inside the museum (Barrera et al.,
2013). Interactive intelligence is the kind of intelligence that permits a digital
technology to elaborate visitors’ preferences (Sparacino, 2004). Narrative intelligence,
finally, enables a digital technology to communicate with visitors (Karaman et al.,
2014). Technologies with such features, then, may potentially stimulate positive
feelings and emotions in visitors. Particularly, the storytelling of digital
personalization of cultural heritage sites can effectively personalize visitors’
experience and uplifts the visit toward an authentic and unique experience (Frow and
Payne, 2007; Sani, 2011). Since these technologies could help visitors in fully
understanding their personal interests towards arts and cultural heritage, they can also
act as instruments of cultural heritage sites promotion. Specifically, these technologies
can suggest visitors’ successive cultural heritage sites and also stimulate visitors to
suggests others to visit particular sites due to their positive experience (Sweeney et al.,
2012).Finally, this study stresses the importance of digital technologies as instruments of experiential marketing by improving visitors’ experience. Moreover, digital technologies for cultural heritage may be interpreted as a key competitive advantage for cultural heritage sites. In particular, digital technologies may be interpreted as strategic levers in order to stimulate the diffusion of word-of-mouth marketing in cultural heritage.Finally, this study stresses the importance of digital technologies as instruments of experiential marketing by improving visitors’ experience. Moreover, digital technologies for cultural heritage may be interpreted as a key competitive advantage for cultural heritage sites. In particular, digital technologies may be interpreted as strategic levers in order to stimulate the diffusion of word-of-mouth marketing in cultural heritage.
본 연구는 긍정적/부정적 마케팅 정보에 대해 동서양의 문화적 차이를 소비자심리학, 크로스컬 쳐, 음양이론의 융합관점을 통해 비교하였다. 음양이론은 철학적 이중적 사고(또는 이원성)라고 정 의되는데, 이는 두개의 상반되는 특성이 공존할 수 있음을 바탕으로 사고하는 것을 의미 한다. 음 양이론에 대해 강한 믿음을 가진 동양인은 어떠한 정보에 노출되더라도, 반대 측면을 추론하는 성 향이 높을 것이다. 이러한 성향은 마케팅 메시지에서 기대하지 않는 효과, 긍정적 정보의 부정적 효과, 부정적 정보의 긍정적 효과를 유발시킬 것이다.
연구결과, 동양인은 서양인보다 긍정적 정보에 대해 더 부정적 반응을 보였고, 긍정적 태도수준 이 감소하는 것으로 나타났다. 반면, 서양인은 긍정적 정보에 의해 강화 또는 비감소현상을 보임으 로써 동양인과 서양인의 차이를 보였다. 부정적 정보에 대해 동양인은 서양인보다 더 긍정적인 반 응을 보였고, 서양인은 더 부정적인 반응을 나타내었다.
본 연구는 긍정적 또는 부정적 정보에 대한 동양인의 정보처리과정을 음양이론으로 접근 방법으 로 설명하였다는데 학문적 의미가 있다. 글로벌 기업은 동일한 메시지에 대해 동양인과 서양인이 다르게 인식 및 반응할 수 있다는 인식해야할 필요가 있겠다.
With traditional boundaries among culture, technology, finance, politics, and ecology are disappearing (Friedman, 1999), the need of businesses to deliver unusual experiences to the consumers have increased in order to survive and thrive. With consumer’s need diversifying and getting more complex, capturing receiver’s attention is becoming the key issue for brands (Jung & Shin, 2010). Resultantly, the traditional operators are feeling the necessity to co-operate with those in other fields to obtain differentiation. Hence, even without one consensus meaning existing, the emphasis on the word 'convergence' is consistently growing. Its popularity of use reflects the era we live in, where boundaries are fading and unaccustomed ideas are brought together (Lord & Velez, 2013). However, despite its importance increasing, researches on convergence marketing are very limited. Most of the studies focus only on qualitative research, especially on case studies or defining conceptual definition of term convergence. Thus, not much is known of how consumers perceive this new way of approach. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to first, understand how the consumers perceive marketing of technology and marketing of culture, and second, how the convergence of these two influence on brand perception.
The concept of convergence holds meaning in all sorts of fields from telecommunications, computer sciences, mathematics, logic, to economics, sociology, accounting and others (Lord & Velez, 2013). Although it seems that the word convergence is more or only related to the information technology discourse, however in large, although it is true that it was mainly based on the advance of information technology, the concept of convergence is frequently used both in the media industry and the other academic fields. From media industry, it denotes the ongoing restructuring of media companies as well as to describe the various intersections between media technologies, industries, content and audiences. Yet, in academic fields, in the same context of convergence several other terms are frequently used in the literatures, for example as alliance, partnership, sponsorship, and collaboration (Appelgren, 2004) which is all based on the same ‘coming together’ yet differs in specific goal. The convergence marketing that emerged from the intensified competition among brands co-operates with those in other fields in order to create differentiating point.
The convergence in fashion industry is found with two main streams of technology convergence and cultural convergence (Wi, 2013). In line with the fact that convergence in everyday life bases from the improvement of technology, the application of technology in fashion industry is also found throughout the production process, from design to production and distribution. Unlike 2000s where fast fashion changed the fashion system, the impact of technology seems to be the largest in the turn of 2010 (Choo et al., 2012; Ko, Kim, & Lee, 2009). As the convergence of marketing and IT can create rich, technologically enabled digital experiences that engage, delight, and serve the consumer, now it plays a part as a source of innovation (Lord & Velez, 2013). Accordingly, with pioneering advantages that technology appliance can deliver, many luxury brands have adopted new technology in its marketing strategies, including QR code in the magazine ad, hologram technique replacing the plastic mannequin, motion reacting interactive show window are to name a few. Similarly, culture for marketing is found with consumers pursuing more and more cultural and intellectual activities with the improvement of the standard of living. As concept of art exemplified from the marketing standpoint evoke general connotations of sophistication, culture, luxury and prestige (Martorella, 1996), many luxury brands are applying cultural contents to improve brand images (Hagtvedt & Patrick, 2008). In sum, to satisfy consumers’ diverse need, brands are trying to incorporate not only using the novel digital devices, but also conveying the cultural contents to provide emotional stimulus. Thus, this study focuses on the marketing communication using convergence of technology and culture that aims to gain consumers’ evaluation.
This study applies complex model of Technology acceptance model to Pleasure-arousal-dominance theory to better understand how consumers perceived and adopt the new type of marketing strategy. TAM is a widely employed in various studies to predict users’ behavior intentions (Hsu & Lu, 2004). Technology acceptance model suggested by Davis (1989) is agreed as the theoretical background useful to explain individual adoption behavior with the introduction of such relatively new medium like this make users to experience new ways (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988). Yet, in the model application stage, it was suggested that TAM model focuses only on the judgment of the system of technology and lacks the ability to explain other potentially important factors that can influence on users’ acceptance process. Thus, similar to the other previous researches, this study also linked the emotion response to the existing technology acceptance model (Igbaria, Zinatelli, Cragg, & Cavaye, 1997; Venkatesh, 2000). This was due to the fact that the usage of technology is extending throughout the industry, and emotional factors are found to work as an important factor in such work. Many other approaches have been made in order to explain the emotional side of the adoption, yet in this study, pleasure-arousal-dominance theory which is often used to explain in marketing communication discourse and is supported in application for experiential aspect (Holbrook & Batra, 1987). Pleasure-arousal-dominance theory (PAD; Mehrabian & Russell (1974)) suggested by Mehrabian & Russell (1974) explains the three basic emotion status to mediate approach-avoidance behaviors in any environment based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response(S-O-R) paradigm. It explains that individual’s emotional status is aroused by the mediating environment (Donovan, Rossiter, Marcoolyn, & Nesdale, 1994). Yet, interpreting the recent studies arguing that in consumption related emotions situation, dominance is not necessary (Donovan et al., 1994), this study was adopted as a two-dimensional construct that can impact the user’s behavior intention. In sum, this study applies perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, pleasure, and arousal as the determinants of adoption.
In addition, not simply examining the adoption process of the convergence marketing, but this study relates to the actual effect on consumers’ brand evaluation. The appliance of TAM as the part of individual dimension variable was found in recent studies that investigated the effect of adverting with interactive medium (Han & Park, 2010; Shim, 2009). Previous literatures have suggested the perceived usefulness significantly influences on the attitude toward the retailer that provides such experience (Lee et al, 2006). Especially, such studies were made within the e-commerce conditions, such as investigation of consumer behavior towards a non-profit organization’s virtual store (Chen et al, 2002), influence of perceived usefulness positively influencing on attitude towards the online retailer and intentions to use from such retailer (Vijayasarathy, 2004), and determinants of adoption (usefulness, ease of use, and enjoyment) on the attitude toward the online retailer (Lee et al, 2006). On this account, brand attitude, and purchase intention was examined.
In this study, survey method in order to investigate how consumers perceive the convergence marketing in the marketing communication context, and further, how they evaluated the brand performing convergence marketing. Preliminary study was first proceed to understand how marketing of technology and marketing of culture is recognized by consumers, and further, manipulate each stimuli. The adoption process was investigated using technology acceptance model combined with pleasure-arousal-dominance theory, as a part of the individual variables. With mediating effect of consumer characteristics found to be important in convergence marketing (Kim, 2007), personal innovativeness, art involvement, and need for uniqueness was applied to see the mediating effect. Therefore, a survey was conducted to see the differences in the degree of convergence. The preliminary research with 183 samples indicated that convergence marketing method was preferred over the dedicated marketing of technology or culture. Thus, the experimental design that was designed in a form of 2 by 2 between subjects factorial design with factors of innovation of technology and classiness of culture, the 513 samples collected a total of 485 samples being used.
The analysis indicated that as the convergence traits of novelty and classic increase, determinant of intentions were strongly generated, followed by the increasing intention to accept, continued to building positive brand attitude and purchase intention. Yet, in specific, novelty trait had direct influences on making emotional feeling, including pleasure and arousal, rather than on generating cognitive reaction. It was the classic trait that had relationship in between cognitive and emotional reaction. Additionally, it was also found that in case of emotional feeling were evoked, pleasure and arousal, it influenced on building positive brand attitude continued to purchase intention even if adoption intention was not made. Moreover, when adoption intention was made, the direct influence on positive brand attitude was found to be significant. Meanwhile, determinants of adoption were found to have the significant influence on adoption intention and on brand attitude. The positive influence of determinants of adoption on adoption intention is in line with a number of researches on ETAM. When perceived to be higher, all resulted in higher adoption intention (Tzou et al., 2009). In terms of brand attitude, it was found that only the emotional variables of pleasure and arousal that had direct influence to have marketing effectance, which coincides with the result of Childers et al. (2001). This study indicates that compared to the perceived usefulness and ease of use, enjoyment was a stronger driver to predict the attitude. In sum, the result implies that convergence marketing can work to satisfy both the cognition dimension as well as the emotional facet. When drivers of determinants of adoption is generated, it strongly influence on the adoption intention.
Yet, in order to have the marketing communication effect on brand attitude and purchase intention, it is necessary to consider the emotional aspect, either pleasure or arousal. Such relationship is not only related to the cultural contents, but technology itself can now deliver emotional feelings to the consumers. Thus, the marketing director should focus on the usage of technology to involve emotional facets.
In addition, all individual characteristics were found to be significantly moderating. Result of the effect of personal innovativeness implies that those of highly innovated tends to not only have strongly influence on adoption intention, but also had significant effect of advertising effect compared to the less innovated groups. The moderating effects of art involvement turned out that those highly involved in art, novelty did not matter much compared to the less involved group. In case of need for uniqueness, the significant relationship of perceived pleasure on brand attitude was found, yet unlike expected, those low in need for uniqueness had significantly stronger adoption intention. Thus, this can be perceived as due to the marketing activity targeting the mass audience, lacking the attractiveness towards those in higher need for uniqueness. Thus, in order to attract both those in high and low need of uniqueness, delivering both usefulness as well as pleasure is important.
The result of this study contributes to understanding on status and recent trend of convergence marketing activities. Further, it is meaningful in that it is in line with the recent studies of applying TAM in combination with PAD theory as well as within the context of marketing communication. Thus, the result of this study is expected to be helpful in understanding the new hybrid consumers and give suggests useful information for establishing future brand communication plans. Yet, to further understand the interpretation process of consumer studies that incorporate variables suggested from the interview should be incorporated in the study.
This study confirms that the shopping experiential values perceived by Chinese tourists affect their product and store attitudes through the emotions of entertainment and escapism. It is particularly notable that this study verifies diverse roles of different emotions such as entertainment and escapism in the context of tourist shopping. This study employs empirical analysis on tourists, and provides practical implications including the importance of shopping experiential values for developing retail strategies.
The summary of the main results is as follows. First, the results of image attribute on each cultural marketing communication pattern, uniqueness on cultural communication and public interest on cultural sponsorship had the most positive responses. Second, the analysis on the relationship among brand attitude, artist attitude and purchase intention showed that aesthetics and communicativeness positively influenced both brand attitude and artist attitude. Also, both brand attitude and artist attitude had a positive effects on purchase intention. Third, the differences between lifestyle brand and high, low fit artist, aesthetics and public interest showed positive effective relationship toward brand attitude while nobility and communicativeness showed positive effective relationship toward artist attitude as far as artist fit is high. The notable result of the analysis on relationship among the cultural arts lifestyle groups are as follows. Aesthetics to artist attitude, uniqueness to brand attitude were found to have highest response from mass culture enjoyers group, while proponents of high culture group showed greatest response to nobility toward artist attitude. The analysis of the relationship differences in patterns, the effect on nobility to artist attitude, brand attitude to purchase intention for cultural communication displayed highest. For cultural sponsorship, communicativeness to brand attitude, brand attitude to artist attitude to purchase intention showed the most positive effect, while, in cultural corporate image pattern exhibited a great response aesthetics toward brand attitude and communicativeness toward artist attitude, the second strongest effect on brand attitude to artist attitude to purchase intention.
The implication of the study is that it demonstrates the relationship of image attribute specifying each pattern from the previous studies and investigates the difference in the relationship of brand attitude, artist attitude and purchase intention among image attribute. In addition, by demonstrating the difference in the relationship among the cultural arts lifestyle groups, as well as the high and low fit between lifestyle brand and artist, the study provides an insight and a specified path for marketers as they plan out ways to utilize cultural marketing communications. Finally, by verifying the relationship among patterns, our study offers useful points of reference also for artists or art foundations who plan it with lifestyle brands using strategic approach to consumers by specified means.
Reviewing survey research published in the Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management during the years 2010 – 2014, we highlight two areas where theory testing in global and cross-cultural fashion marketing would benefit from improvement. In particular, cross-sectional, single-source research designs and alternative explanations threaten the internal validity of the literature. Our aim is to discuss how a series of well-established survey preparation techniques and post hoc tests can overcome these threats and strengthen the findings stemming from global and cross-cultural fashion marketing research. At the core of our recommendations are recent advances in common method variance testing and covariate analysis. We discuss how these prescriptions can be used to advance theories related to large-scale global and cross-cultural fashion marketing research efforts.
이 연구는 무용을 통한 기업의 문화마케팅 활동이 해당기업의 이미지 및 지각된 품질, 충성도 에 영향을 규명하는데 목적이 있다. 연구의 목적을 달성하기 위하여 연구대상은 경기도 지역에 소재한 4년제 대학교에 재학 중인 대학생들을 모집단으로 설정하였으며 최종분석에는 200개의 자료가 활용되었다. 조사도구는 설문지를 사용하였으며 신뢰도와 타당도를 검증하여 사용하였 다. 또한 가설검증은 AMOS를 이용한 확인적요인분석(confirmatory factor analysis; CFA)과 구조방 정식모형분석(structural equation model; SEM)을 실시하였으며, 그 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 문 화마케팅 활동 참여 기업의 기업이미지는 지각된 품질에 긍정적인 영향을 미친다. 둘째, 문화마 케팅 활동 참여 기업의 기업이미지는 충성도에 긍정적인 영향을 미친다. 셋째, 문화마케팅 활동 참여 기업의 지각된 품질은 충성도에 긍정적인 영향을 미친다. 넷째, 문화마케팅 활동 참여 기 업의 기업이미지는 지각된 품질을 통해서 충성도에 긍정적인 영향을 미친다. 이러한 결과는 기 업이 문화마케팅 활동에 참여할 경우 대중에게 호의적인 기업이미지를 각인시키고 해당기업에 대한 상표나 제품에 대해 신뢰를 가질 수 있음을 알 수 있었다. 더 나아가 문화마케팅 활동이 해당기업에 대한 충성도를 높이게 됨으로서 기업경영활동에 득이 될 수 있음을 시사한다.