목적 : 본 연구의 목표는 서울지역 20대 MZ세대 집단이 인식하는 해외 안경테 브랜드 국가의 감성의미를 도출 하는 것이다. 방법 : 먼저 연구 대상으로 이탈리아, 프랑스, 미국, 일본 4개국을 선정하였다. 의미분별법을 이용하여 감성어 휘 8개를 추출한 다음, 설문조사와 통계처리를 통하여 각각의 국가별로 해당되는 감성어휘를 결정하였고, 해외 안 경테 브랜드 국가에 대한 선호도 조사를 추가로 실시하였다. 결과 : 이탈리아, 프랑스, 미국, 일본의 4가지 해외 안경테 브랜드 국가들에 대하여 각각 고급스러움, 매력적 임, 실용적임, 동양적임이라는 감성어휘를 가장 많이 선택하였다. 안경테에 대한 선호도 순위는 이탈리아, 프랑스, 미국, 일본 순으로 나타났다. 결론 : 도출된 감성어휘들과 응답자들의 선호도를 분석했을 때, 고급스러움과 디자인적 측면을 중시하는 MZ세 대의 플렉스 소비 성향에는 이탈리아와 프랑스 브랜드의 안경테가 가정 적합한 것으로 여겨진다.

In today’s highly inter-connected market environment, a holistic understanding of the emergence and transfer of brand meanings is essential to design well-grounded marketing strategies. Yet, research to date has grasped the phenomenon of brand meaning alteration mostly within isolated, theoretical concepts, such as Consumer Brand Sabotage (Kähr, et al., 2016), Doppelgänger Brand Images (Thompson, Rindfleisch, & Arsel, 2006), or Conspicuous Brand Usage (Ferraro, Kirmani, & Matherly, 2013). Hence, the present research was conducted to develop a systematic understanding of how unintended brand meanings emerge outside of marketer’s control. Based on Gioia’s case study approach, the two brands Birkenstock and New Balance were qualitatively explored, as both companies experienced a serious socio-cultural meaning transition over the last years. The findings indicate that marketers need to be aware of consumers taking psychological brand ownership – a possessive state of mind that evokes unpredictable interpretations and ostentations of brand symbols due to consumers’ desire for self-identity construction (Pierce, Kostova, & Dirks, 2001). Psychological ownership is identified to impact both consumption practices and the process of meaning movement (cf. McCracken, 1986). In both cases, marketers lost control of their brands, as consumers utilized them to construct their self-identity and therefore altered the brands’ publicly perceived meaning. Whereas the brand meaning alteration had a positive outcome for Birkenstock, New Balance suffered badly under its brand disruption. Based on the researched insights, three key propositions are developed, which should support marketers to foresee, prevent, and countervail the emergence of unintended brand meanings.

The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, informed by cultural research on branding and active audience media uses, we develop a general tenet that consumers interpret luxury brand meanings to fulfil specific gratifications. Therefore, the consumer-perceived meanings ascribed to brand luxury can be explored as multiple themes of uses and gratifications (U&G’s). Second, we draw on this tenet to investigate a situated emic account of how consumers use luxury brands to gratify their specific needs. Third, we derive several etic concepts around emic themes that comprise higher-order, more abstract conceptual layers of the consumer-perceived brand luxury. Specifically, our interpretive reading of consumer narratives suggests that luxury brand U&G’s are multiple and divergent; however, they are not completely idiosyncratic – that is, these U&G’s can be understood more holistically in relation to how consumers perceive the dominant value(s) that are being gratified from luxury brands, and whether the U&G’s have a personal or social orientation. In so doing, we illustrate that by dialectically iterating between the emic (informants’ points of view) and etic (theoretical) perspectives, we are able to offer a more complete understanding of luxury brand meanings and their emergence in the broader context of daily life.