Brand authenticity of luxury products: exploring the ruling relationship between consumer and brand as policy-actor groups

This project is a transdisciplinary research of luxury brand management. It is conducted by studying the policy actor groups. I engaged myself in this autoethnography research as a professional practitioner. I applied role theory and Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) in my autoethnography research to describe and explain how luxury brand management be possible in the offline business environment. Role factors and the properties of them are analyzed which show the dynamic and importance of human relationship in the process of luxury brand management. Using content analysis and strategy with Grounded Theory strategy, additional hypotheses of NPF have been developed for better understanding of luxury brand management practice.

Brand authenticity as the most critical brand-oriented value that defines a brand policy. Managers of luxury brands are trying to differentiate their brands with each another by manage the establishment and implementation of brand policy of their brands. Brand managers work with their business partners to implement brand policy. They manage their relationship under the regime of their own identities continuously. Despite the co-ownership nature of brand policy accelerated, due to the fast development of globalization process and Internet technology, brand managers still trying to rule their business partner as a sole owner of a brand policy in both the meso and micro level of NPF management. In view of the ever increase interaction of human beings, the relationship among parties involved in the brand policy management becomes sophisticated. This phenomenon challenges the ruling practice of policy ownership of brand managers and the degree of brand authenticity of the brands they manage.

Instead of regarding luxury brand management as an object to study, in terms of intention, action, and relationship among the policy actors, I took another route that I went beyond an observer role and engaged myself in the luxury management practice to uncover theory of luxury brand management practice. My life experience in luxury goods industry shapes my perspective of luxury brand management. In this study, I adopted the journey of my career development as the basis of my autoethnography studies. Artefact includes articles, diary, emails, photos, minutes of meetings, conversation, floor layout plan for stores, are collected during my daily business encountering. The dynamic of role cognition and role acting among the players are the focuses of my research. Thusly, theoretical sampling technique was brought into the whole course of my data collection and analyses phases.

The contribution of this research is my discovery of three new NPF propositions and the devise of role factors and the related properties for the NPF practice in luxury brand management. This is achieved by using an accepted research methodology in a new attempt on my further construction of the NPF propositions. Propositions deployment is crucial for several reasons. Firstly, the expected behavior of consumers to a luxury branding strategy can be better understood by putting focus on meso-level NPF brand management practice. Secondly, brand management as a narrative policy matter is only possible to realize through the understanding of human interaction with purposes. It is important to realize the nature of role play and acting of practitioners in the management practice by applying the NPF. Thirdly, insight of brand managers can be better nurtured by putting branding management practice as a transdisciplinary matter.