Research Methodology
3.9 Overall Research Context
The qualitative research was contextualized to the fashion and food brand categories to provide a more holistic representation of brands that capture both symbolic and functional attributes. The fashion and food contexts provide the foundations for utilitarian, symbolic and emotional benefits provided by the brand to the consumer, by considering users’ values and lifestyles with reference to Ratchford’s (1987) think versus feel dimension. Food brands are likely to provide more utilitarian benefits, whereas fashion brands are likely to have a high symbolic meaning for the consumer based on hedonic attributes (Higgins, 1997, 2000; Zhou and Pham, 2004).
3.9.1 Rationale for the Research Context
In the study, the selection of the stimuli (fashion and food brands) followed a two-step process to ensure distinctive brand personalities. Brands were carefully selected to ensure high levels of familiarity and involvement; involvement refers to the interest the consumer has with the brand. It was essential to ensure that respondents were familiar with the brands to evoke personalities through a symbolic meaning.
Research within fashion involvement (Tigert, Ring and Kind, 1976; Fairhurst, Good and Gentry, 1989;
Shim, Morris and Morgan, 1989; O’Cass, 2000) has indicated that consumer interest with the brand lies in the apparel product category. Therefore, consumer involvement with the brand is heavily influenced by their self-concept, and varies from situation to situation. Sirgy (1982) posits that consumers’ overall self-concept is dependent upon how the consumer views their self in different situations, how they would like to be perceived or what their expectation is of how others should
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perceive them. One way of portraying this is through fashion brands. Fashion brands are symbols that represent a statement, especially in this age of heightened self-consciousness (Davis, 1992). It serves as social differentiation and social integration and has evolved into a psychological need that demands to be satisfied in modern economic life. Fashion brands therefore carry meanings through images and thoughts, and sentiments are communicated to others by new or old fashion (Davis, 1992). That is, through fashion, consumers communicate things about their personality; at the collective level, this results in locating them symbolically in the structured universe of status claims and lifestyle attachments. As fashion is a visual expression in dress, and adornment is the statement of values (Tigert, Ring and King, 1976), fashion brands, therefore, are a symbolic representation where the consumer assesses the brand according to its capability to match their overall self-concept (Hogg, Cox and Keeling, 2002; Parker, 2009).
Similarly, Hollander (1978), Holman (1980), and McCracken and Roth (1989) demonstrated the use of clothing as a symbol, is viewed as a language which allows a message to be created and selectively understood by consumers. Likewise, Dittmar (1992) concluded that an individual’s identity is influenced by the symbolic meanings of his or her own material possessions, and the way in which, consumers relate to those possessions. In similar vein, Bakewell and Mitchell (2006), identified the importance in the change of gender roles and identified that the combined effect of: media influences and commercial practice, have embraced a new cultural norms whereby clothing brands is something that not only women, but also men are aware of and involved with.
Fashion brands are perceived in light of consumers’ values which they acquire to improve their social and self-image through the symbolic meanings of brands (McCracken and Roth, 1989). As a result, brands create a meaning for consumers which reside in the product; it is, therefore, important to understand the meanings that consumers associate with the brand. While fashion brands are dependent on brand cues, such as brand product, consumers and situations, which all interact with one another, food brands are dependent on the level of consumption, source credibility and spokespersons’ character (Kyung, Kwon and Sung, 2010), providing a more personal interaction with the brand which facilitates the personification of a brand through the reflection of self-identity.
Similarly, food brands encapsulate experiential attributes such as color, flavor, aroma, bitterness, and aftertaste, which reinforce the consumption benefits that underlie brand beliefs that represent the
“personal value and meanings that consumers attach to the brand” (Keller 2003: 596). Furthermore, food brands include salient evaluative criteria that consumers can easily access (Smith and Swinyard, 1983), suggesting that food brands hold strong connotations for consumption.
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Therefore, fashion and food brands are not limited to instrumental or functional benefits but are also related to hedonistic and emotional consumption experiences (Davis, 1988; Kyung, Kwon and Sung, 2010). This research is contextualized to the fashion and food brand categories to provide a more holistic representation of brands that capture both hedonic and functional attributes of users’ values and lifestyles (Ratchford, 1987).
Conclusion
This chapter explored the rationale for the methodology adopted in this research. Founded within the positivistic paradigm, this research is based upon the assumption of realism where social reality is first explored through qualitative inquiry and then tested using a quantitative survey methodology.
This methodology is determined by the maturity of the topic of interest, and this research in brand personality can be considered to be in the intermediate qualitative and quantitative range, since much of the topic is grounded in conceptual thinking which first needs to be explored and then empirically tested. The chapter went on to briefly describe the overview of the two main study categories involved in this research, namely: Study 1: Initial Scale Development and Study 2:
Confirmatory Scale Development Study. The chapter also provided an overview of the qualitative and quantitative methodologies adopted in this research. A more focused methodology approach along with the procedure, study specific sample, methodology and results will be detailed in the subsequent chapter. Building on the cross-sectional research design, this chapter detailed the research ethics, overall sample and research context for the development of a Negative Brand Personality scale.
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