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The Way Brands Work: Consumers' Understanding of the Creation and Usage of Brands The Way Brands Work: Consumers' understanding of the creation and usage of brands Bertilsson, Jon 2009 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Bertilsson, J. (2009). The Way Brands Work: Consumers' understanding of the creation and usage of brands. Lund Business Press. 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LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 Download date: 06. Oct. 2021 The way brands work Consumers’ understanding of the creation and usage of brands Jon Bertilsson Lund Institute of Economic Research School of Economics and Management Lund Business Press Lund Studies in Economics and Management 114 Lund Business Press Lund Institute of Economic Research P.O. Box 7080, SE-220 07 Lund, Sweden ISBN-10 91-85113-40-9 ISBN-13 978-91-85113-40-8 © Jon Bertilsson Printed in Sweden Wallin & Dalholm Digital AB 2009 Table of contents 1 Brands, Branding and Consumers ............................................................. 1 1.1 Background .......................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Contributions from a traditional brand management perspective ......................... 7 1.3 A consumer research perspective on the understanding of brands ......................... 8 1.3.1 The construction of consumers’ understanding of consumption ........................................ 11 1.3.2 Content of consumers’ consumption understanding .......................................................... 13 1.3.3 Critique of prior research ................................................................................................... 15 1.3.4 Working out the purpose................................................................................................... 17 1.4 Disposition ......................................................................................................... 21 2 Theoretical perspectives ........................................................................... 23 2.1 Consumers’ understanding construction ............................................................ 23 2.1.1 A macro level perspective ................................................................................................... 24 2.1.2 Interactions as a way to construct understanding and make sense ....................................... 26 2.1.3 Typifications, institutions, roles and knowledge ................................................................. 28 2.1.4 Acquiring social and cultural knowledge ............................................................................ 30 2.1.5 Cultural navigation............................................................................................................ 33 2.1.6 Strategic uses of talk .......................................................................................................... 37 2.2 Consumers’ pre-theoretical knowledge ............................................................... 39 2.2.1 Folk theory in social science ............................................................................................... 39 2.2.2 Pre-theoretical knowledge in consumer research ................................................................ 43 2.3 Designing and assembling a tentative model ....................................................... 45 3 Net work ................................................................................................. 49 3.1 Capturing interactions and naturally occurring talk ............................................ 49 3.2 Netnography ...................................................................................................... 51 3.3 Research informants ........................................................................................... 54 3.4 Empirical sites .................................................................................................... 54 3.4.1 Complementary empirical sources ..................................................................................... 57 3.5 Conducting rigorous and trustworthy online research ........................................ 58 3.5.1 Approaching the empirical context .................................................................................... 58 3.5.2 Data collection .................................................................................................................. 59 3.5.3 Analysis and interpretation ................................................................................................ 61 3.5.4 Conducting ethical online research .................................................................................... 64 3.5.5 Trustworthy interpretations and degrees of transferability .................................................. 65 3.6 Methodological tradeoffs .................................................................................... 68 3.7 Summary ............................................................................................................ 70 4 Brands and consumption from a youth culture perspective ..................... 71 4.1 Youth culture and teenagers as a consuming segment ......................................... 71 4.2 The life world of the young ................................................................................ 72 4.3 Youth style and consumption ............................................................................. 73 4.3.1 Constructing, perpetuating and enacting styles .................................................................. 75 4.4 Summary ............................................................................................................ 78 5 Components and characteristics of the empirical milieu – a youth perspective .................................................................................................. 81 5.1 Brand symbols in the empirical context .............................................................. 82 5.1.1 Tiger of Sweden ................................................................................................................ 83 5.1.2 JL (J Lindeberg) ................................................................................................................ 84 5.1.3 WeSC ............................................................................................................................... 84 5.1.4 Cheap Monday ................................................................................................................. 86 5.1.5 Acne ................................................................................................................................. 86 5.1.6 Nudie ............................................................................................................................... 87 5.1.7 H&M (Hennes & Mauritz) .............................................................................................. 88 5.1.8 Filippa K .......................................................................................................................... 89 5.2 Examples of various youth styles in the Swedish milieu ....................................... 89 6 Forming brand understandings ............................................................... 95 6.1 The formal and typified structure of the cultural field ......................................... 95 6.1.1 Titles, formal status positions and typified roles ................................................................ 97 6.1.2 Status mobility – playing the power game ....................................................................... 102 6.2 The informal social structure of the cultural field .............................................. 108 6.2.1 Types of interactions and informal discrepant roles ......................................................... 109 6.3 Summary .......................................................................................................... 119 7 Making sense of the symbolic landscape ................................................ 121 7.1 Staying brand alert ............................................................................................ 121 7.1.1 Brands as the symbolic markers of style ........................................................................... 123 7.1.2 Style typifications and brand symbol plundering ............................................................. 131 7.1.3 From delight to disgust - the logic behind brand meaning dilution ................................. 137 7.2 Summary .........................................................................................................
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