Abstract
Purpose – Over the past few years online fashion communities have proliferated becoming an increasingly powerful forum for user-generated content, and consequently, the fashion industry has shown great interest in such communities. The purpose of this paper is to review and analyse brand advocacy behaviour within luxury brand accessory forums: to analyse the role these communities play in influencing purchase intention; assessing their contribution to fashion brand love. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopted a netnographic approach to the phenomenon of online luxury accessory communities. The research reports observational data including blog texts and audience comments for four popular forums: The Purse Forum, The Fashion Spot, The Bag Forum (TBF) and Shoe Forum (SF). Although the forums are open to all and are designed to be internationally relevant; the observations were conducted from a base in the UK. Findings – Findings indicate that informants display some unifying characteristics clustered around engagement, involvement, self-concept and self-connection, brand love and hedonic values. Informants however, display some discernible differences as they “rally” to two distinctive totems: first, active luxury brand advocates and second, passive brand advocates. Although subtle, these differences suggest significant possibilities for fashion brand owners. Research limitations/implications – Further research could include the measurement of brand advocacy to distinguish more clearly between high and low levels of advocacy and the resulting consumer behaviour intentions. One sub-group that would be interesting to explore is that of brand evangelists and their relationship with fashion brands: what are the reasons for treating brands as religious artefacts and can this extreme level of advocacy be developed by marketing? The study focused on observing online posts by self-selected brand advocates. A worthwhile comparison could be made with fashion communities where brand marketers are active participants and how this influences the discourse and actions of brand advocates. Practical implications – The findings indicate that all forum members are incredibly attached to their brands, but will still consider purchasing several brands as their “evoked set”. Additionally, even when demonstrating involvement, they can operate as passive observers in the online community. Originality/value – Social media, especially online forums, play an important role in contemporary luxury fashion branding. This study addresses the role these forums play in supporting brand love and the contribution they make to luxury brand advocacy. Membership and influence dynamics are reported; which have resonance to both practitioners and researchers.Citation
Parrott G, Danbury A, Kanthavanich P (2015) 'Online behaviour of luxury fashion brand advocates', Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 19 (4), pp.360-383.Publisher
EmeraldAdditional Links
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JFMM-09-2014-0069Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
1361-2026EISSN
1361-2026ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1108/JFMM-09-2014-0069
Scopus Count
Collections
The following license files are associated with this item:
- Creative Commons
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Green - can archive pre-print and post-print or publisher's version/PDF
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Investigating residents and municipality processes of co-creation in branding Luton – a place with a negative reputationStoica, Ioana Sabrina (University of BedfordshireUniversity of Bedfordshire, 2021-04)In consideration to place branding as a holistic and integrated concept, this thesis presents an investigation of the processes of co-creation between residents and municipality scrutinised in three branding practices (top-down, bottom-up and mixed branding approaches) of a place with a negative reputation: Luton. The study utilises a combination of concepts from corporate brands and place brands. A qualitative methodology and multi-methods were used to achieve the following objectives: (1) investigate the factors influencing participation in different branding approaches, (2) explore the processes and roles undertaken by the actors involved and (3) examine the outcomes achieved. The study examined three campaigns, one representative for each branding approach, through an interpretivist paradigm, a social construction epistemology and an iterative-inductive ethnographic approach. The investigation was undertaken in three stages, which included interviews with the municipality and residents, auto-ethnographic, netnographic data and document analysis. The findings indicate that co-creation processes can have multiple nuances in different branding approaches and most often, the theoretical and practical views of co-creation are clashing. The study proposes a framework for residents and municipality co-creation which brings insights into different factors affecting participation, four dimensions of co-creation with direct and indirect methods and active and passive actors’ roles and their outcomes. While co-creation processes usually bring positive outcomes, the data suggests that the outcomes can be both positive and negative according with the dimensions used to co-create meaning, the active and passive residents’ involvement, and the power relations in the processes. The findings contribute to the understanding of the intricacies of co-creation, participatory branding and residents’ involvement in branding places which are struggling with their reputation. The theoretical framework argues for a distinction between co-creation and participation and can support places in the process of involving residents in brand meaning co-creation, avoid “common” issues faced in participatory branding and consequently help the brand minimise representational dissonances and improve its reputation.
-
Internal branding framework based on brand perceptions of managers and employees of an airline companyAl Ketbi, Saleh (University of BedfordshireUniversity of Bedfordshire, 2021-05)Internal branding is an ongoing process involving all agents within the company. As such, an exploration of internal branding will not only be limited to the formal understanding of internal stakeholders but will allow the subjective meanings of their understanding to be revealed as well. This investigated the perceived organizational factors, brand support behaviours, and views of managers and employees on the delivery of brand promise in an airline company case study and developed an internal branding framework based on the findings. Specifically, the research investigated how the managers and employees perceived the organizational climate and communication channels in their company; how they made sense of their brand knowledge, commitment, and citizenship; and how they viewed the delivery of their company brand promise. The consequent findings from the investigation served as the building blocks in the development of the internal branding framework in the study. The study used the qualitative design, adopted the constructivist/interpretivist philosophy; and utilized the inductive approach, with a focus on a single institution. The semi-structured interview was used to optimise data collection. A total of 30 individuals consisting of 10 managers and 20 employees participated in the study. The data was analysed using thematic analysis and phenomenological reduction and supported by sense-making tools. The study found that organizational factors contributed to the creation of a social space that allowed managers, employees, and other internal stakeholders to interrelate in various ways. It is within these social spaces where internal stakeholders re-framed their brand knowledge, commitment, and citizenship within the context of their lived experiences. As a corollary, the internal branding framework developed in the study demonstrated that the presence of a positive organizational climate and information-rich environment creates an enabling social environment that facilitates the interaction of internal stakeholders. This type of environment enables them to construct and reconstruct their knowledge about their company brand and allows them to make sense of their brand commitment and citizenship that sustain their perception of the delivery of the brand promise. The framework of internal branding developed in the study is the major contribution of this research. Furthermore, this study contributes insight into the dynamics of internal branding from detailed information derived from the perspectives of managers and employees which were used to edify the internal branding framework developed in the study. The framework demonstrates how companies can best leverage their physical and human resources to enhance their brand image through internal branding. The study also provides an analysis of a dataset on brand knowledge, commitment, and citizenship that contributes knowledge of internal branding in an economically dynamic and multi-cultural company context. Lastly, this study contributes to the growing efforts of investigating the internal branding process using a qualitative approach by demonstrating how qualitative studies can be used to explore branding concepts.
-
Online brand advocates of luxury fashion accessoriesKanthavanich, Poramate (University of Bedfordshire, 2011)This study observes brand advocacy and online brand advocates behaviours. The research is using a netnographic approach to uncover perceptions, behaviours and characteristics of online brand advocates within the framework of the loyalty ladder and online brand communities in the context of luxury fashion accessories, particularly handbags. The study analyses discussions, conversations and activities in four online communities. The findings show that brand advocates perceive hedonic values of luxury fashion accessories such as being a source of happiness, fulfilment and belonging. Frequent participation in discussions and activities with others brand fans in the online communities can increase advocacy level and love for the brands, and subsequently turn participants into active brand advocates. Positive word-of-mouth, recommending, defending and sharing love for fashion brands are the key online advocacy behaviours which are caused by love and passion for luxury fashion accessories. The findings also suggest that brand advocacy may not be a stable state depending on the favour and love of the brands at a particular point of time. Thus, brand advocates can exhibit advocacy behaviours for several fashion brands simultaneously. The study makes a contribution to brand advocacy by extending the loyalty ladder with the behaviours and characteristics of online luxury fashion brand advocates. The research provides insights to online advocacy which will be beneficial to both academic research and provide valuable feedback to brand managers.