Saving Face by Making Meaning: The Negative Effects of Brand Communities' Self-serving Response to Brand Extensions

Jill  Avery

Other Unpublished Work | 2010

Saving Face by Making Meaning: The Negative Effects of Brand Communities' Self-serving Response to Brand Extensions

Abstract

An ethnographic study of a brand community following the launch of the Porsche Cayenne SUV finds that brand extensions can negatively affect the value of their parent brands. By studying the collective response to brand extensions of existing consumers and by substituting a culturally situated and socialized view of consumers, I expose negative feedback effects which have been previously undervalued in existing branding theories. By tracing the processes by which brand extensions are dialectically negotiated in a brand community, I show that negative brand effects stem from consumers' self-serving meaning-making activities. The research highlights three discourses in which consumers debate the legitimacy of users of the brand extension, the brand extension itself, and the post-extension parent brand. These discourses shift the locus of the brand's identity meanings within the brand hierarchy rendering the brand extension and the parent brand less attractive as identity markers and reducing brand equity.

Keywords: marketing; Brands; brands and branding; brand management; brand positioning; Brand equity; internet; social media; Customers; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Auto Industry;

Language: English

Format: Print

Citation:

Avery, Jill. "Saving Face by Making Meaning: The Negative Effects of Brand Communities' Self-serving Response to Brand Extensions." (Invited for resubmission at the Journal of Consumer Research.)

Case | HBS Case Collection | May 2020

Brand Storytelling at Shinola

Jill Avery, Giana M. Eckhardt and Michael B. Beverland

Detroit, Michigan, aka “The Motor City,” is most known as the birthplace of most of the American classic automotive brands. It is a city filled with the rich history of the industrial age, the pride of American manufacturing, and of the soulful sounds of Motown music. It is also a place that more recently has become synonymous worldwide with rustbelt urban decay, characterized by abandoned factories, commercial buildings, and homes, soaring unemployment and homelessness, and a sense of despair since the city’s declaration of bankruptcy in 2013, which led to its other nickname, “America’s Warzone”. It was a surprising place to find the headquarters of a new luxury brand. Shinola, a luxury watchmaker and purveyor of stylized, retro-chic, and hipster-cool products, had aggressive goals to grow to 75-100 stores and consumers and store employees, many of whom had never been to Detroit, would need to become familiar with the Shinola brand narrative. Recent expansions of the brand into lower price point timepieces and the hospitality sector would have to be monitored, and future brand extensions and brand partnership opportunities evaluated to support an evolving new luxury lifestyle brand positioning. As they continued to expand the Shinola brand into international markets, the brand’s story, rooted in Detroit’s imagery, history, and lore, might have to be reconsidered to appeal to non-American audiences. Finally, the company found itself the subject of legal and cultural critique. A “RETHINK SHINOLA” artist movement was questioning its commitment to Detroit. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission had recently fined Shinola for unfairly claiming that its products were “made in Detroit,” putting its brand storytelling under the microscope.

Keywords: Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Advertising; Luxury; Consumer Products Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Retail Industry; Detroit; United States; North America;

Citation:

Avery, Jill, Giana M. Eckhardt, and Michael B. Beverland. "Brand Storytelling at Shinola." Harvard Business School Case 520-102, May 2020. View Details

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Saving Face by Making Meaning: The Negative Effects of Brand Communities' Self-serving Response to Brand Extensions

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