Human Brand Research Articles

Artist Names As Human Brands: Brand Strategies in the Italian Gallery Art Market

Considering all transactions related to modern and contemporary visual artists mediated by galleries in Italy between 2007 and 2012, we find that artist brand depends positively on talent, consolidated fame and volatile fame. These three latent characteristics have different impacts on the brand of business and non-business artists. Moreover, we find that in the Italian art market a co-creation mechanism is at work which depends on the galleries' specialization strategy in building their portfolios of artists.

Application of Aaker’s Brand Personality Scale on Human Brands in Surf Sports

Purpose: This research explores the application of Aaker’s brand personality scale on human brands in surf sports. It investigates the potential for detecting differences in the brand personality profile used on human brands. Aaker (1997) developed a brand personality framework consisting out of five dimensions of brand personality and fifteen brand personality attributes. This framework has been used in several studies; however, it has been criticized by researchers for its lack of applicability as a general scale. This paper addresses this issue by testing all forty-two original brand personality attributes, used by Aaker, on professional surfers as human brands. A second objective was to establish an ultra-short scale for practical reasons since brand personality is often only one of several measures in a questionnaire. Methodology: In order to determine what attributes were the most appropriate when describing a professional surfer, a web survey with a 7-point Likert scale was conducted, which resulted in a convenience sample of n=219 respondents. In this study, the author conducted principle factor analysis and compared the results of an oblique rotation with Aaker’s results in order to investigate whether Aaker’s brand personality scale provides similar results on human brands as it does on product brands. Findings: This paper concludes that partially different facets than Aaker’s (1997) brand personality framework apply to human brands in the surf context. The more appropriate facets for human brands in the surf context include: real, wholesome, good-looking, secure, Western, and up-to-date. Research Limitations/Implications: Further research on specific athletes in different contexts is needed. It could incorporate other brand personality scales e.g. Geuens et al. (2009), Braunstein and Ross (2010) and Tsiotsou (2012) scales. Practical Implications: The findings of this study are useful for sports marketers to better understand athletes as human brands as well as their facets, in order to develop target positioning with specific marketing strategies.

Moral Imagination, Parasocial Brand Love, and Customer Citizenship Behavior: Travelers’ Relationship with Sponsoring Airline Brands in the United States

While travelers tend to engage in reflective thinking processes, the relationship between the ability to imagine and the human–brand relations has not been clearly understood. In sustainability and consumer-brand literature, morally imaginative travelers and their relationship with and behavior toward a sponsoring brand have received little attention. In connecting moral imagination with the airline cause sponsorship literature, this study aims to investigate the antecedent of travelers’ parasocial brand love with airlines as sponsors of charitable causes and to identify what motivates customer citizenship behavior. Based on a study sample of 442 travelers who experienced US-based full-service airlines and who were aware of the airlines’ sponsorship of environmental and social charitable causes, the study analyzed the data employing a structural equation modeling (SEM) technique to examine the relationship between moral imagination, parasocial brand love, and customer citizenship behavior. The investigation revealed a positive association between reproductive, productive, and creative imagination and parasocial brand love. Additionally, a positive influence of parasocial brand love on customer citizenship behavior was confirmed. This study highlights that imaginative travelers are good at evaluating the airlines’ sponsorship-related moral situations, further developing parasocial brand love. The results provided important insights into practical, as well as theoretical, arenas.

Human geography and branding in small destinations: a case study of Adıyaman

ABSTRACT Human geography is a field based on the interaction between humankind and the geography it lives in. Within this interaction area, different variables exist such as social life, migration, and culture. Similarly, this interaction is vital in the context of destination and branding. In this study, the term “human geography” was examined specific to Adıyaman, which has a significant historical background. Despite this, Adıyaman cannot use its values in the branding process. Thus, Adıyaman tourism and branding were studied through face-to-face interviews. Depending on data, aspects of humankind–geography interaction were determined on a community level.

When opposites attract? Exploring the existence of complementarity in self‐brand congruence processes

AbstractIn the psychology of human interpersonal attraction, complementarity is a well‐recognized phenomenon, where individuals are attracted to partners with different but complementary traits to their own. Although scholarship in human–brand relations draws heavily from interpersonal attraction theory, preferred techniques for measuring self‐brand congruence tend to capture it in only one form: the similarity configuration, which expresses the extent to which brand traits essentially resemble or mirror a consumer's own. Hence, the aim of this study is to explore, for the first time, the existence of complementarity in self‐brand congruence. From a canonical correlation analysis of survey data in which respondents rated their own personality traits and those of their favorite brand, the existence of both similarity and complementarity configurations is indeed revealed. Based on this, the study then derives a measure of self‐brand congruence that captures both configurations, and tests its predictive power for a range of brand‐related outcomes. The new measure is found to perform well against existing measures of self‐brand congruence based purely on a similarity configuration, particularly for emotionally based brand‐related outcomes.

Transforming Consumers Into Brands: Tracing Transformation Processes of the Practice of Blogging

The goal of this research is to explore the transformational power of a new consumption and production practice, the practice of blogging, to understand its impact on consumers' identity transformations beyond their self-concept as consumers and on the blogosphere as an organizational field. Through an exploratory study of over 12,000 blog posts from five fashion bloggers, complemented by in-depth interviews, we trace the transformation of consumer bloggers. We identify and describe three identity phases, the individual consumer, collective blogger and blogger identity phase, and two important turning points. Our findings show that through a continuous process of identity negotiation, adaptation, and re-interpretation with multiple stakeholders, these bloggers transform into human brands. In turn, these individual transformation processes reciprocally influence the emergence of blogging as a professional practice and of the blogosphere as a new organizational field. These findings contribute to a theoretical understanding of consumer transformation processes in a new field, where consumers can leave their role as consumers through continuously engaging in identity negotiation, adaptation and re-interpretation, creating alternative points of reference and validation in a new field that in turn continues to influence their brand identity. Furthermore, our findings contribute to an understanding of human brands from a brand-as-process perspective, and have implications for brands wishing to collaborate with these influential actors.

Managing the Human in Human Brands

Abstract The physical and social realities, mental biases and limitations of being human differentiate human brands from others. It is their very humanness that introduces risk while generating the ability for enhanced returns. Four particular human characteristics can create imbalance or inconsistency between the person and the brand: mortality, hubris, unpredictability and social embeddedness. None of these qualities manifest in traditional non-human brands, and all of them present risks requiring active managerial attention. Rather than treating humans as brands and making humans into brands for sale in the commercial marketplace, our framework forces a focus on keeping a balance between the person and the personified object.

Building a human brand: Brand anthropomorphism unravelled

Brand anthropomorphism has been found to enhance the ability of consumers to recognize the inherent value of brands. However, there is limited knowledge among practitioners on how to build a brand with humanlike characteristics. After a literature review of brand anthropomorphism in general and the theory of warmth and competence in particular, we present the Human Brand Model of how to build a brand that is perceived to be human. There are four steps in this process; the first three indicate the brand inputs and the last indicates the results of those inputs. This model guides brand managers on how to make their brand more human. The use of this model should result in the organization having an excellent brand reputation; stronger, more meaningful relationships with its customers; and improved brand loyalty.

Bringing The Scarlet Letter into The Scarlet Professor: A Composer's Reflections

Bringing <i>The Scarlet Letter</i> into <i>The Scarlet Professor</i>: A Composer's Reflections

The Influence of Alliance Fit between Human Brand and Product Brand on Attitude toward Co-Brand: Focused on the Role of Self-Congruity

브랜드 제휴와 관련된 선행 연구들은, 주로 제품(기업)브랜드 간의 제휴에 초점을 맞추고 있어 제품브랜드와 휴먼브랜드와의 제휴에 대한 연구는 부족한 편이다. 따라서 소비자에게 잘 알려진 저명인사를 휴먼브랜드로 간주하고 이러한 휴먼브랜드와 제품(기업) 브랜드가 제휴된 공동브랜드 제품을 소비자들이 어떻게 인지하고 평가하는지에 대하여 실증적으로 검증해 볼 필요성이 제기되고 있다. 본 연구의 목적은 휴먼브랜드와 제품브랜드가 적합 혹은 부적합한 전략적 제휴를 하게 될 경우 소비자의 휴먼브랜드 및 제품브랜드와의 자아일치성 정도가 공동브랜드 태도에 어떤 영향을 미치는지를 검증하는 것이다. 구체적으로 첫째, 휴먼브랜드와 제품브랜드의 제휴 적합성이 공동브랜드 태도에 미치는 영향을 알아보고자 한다. 둘째, 적합제휴와 부적합제휴에서 휴먼브랜드 자아일치성과 제품브랜드 자아일치성이 공동브랜드 태도에 미치는 영향을 살펴보고자 한다. 마지막으로 휴먼브랜드 자아일치성과 제품브랜드 자아일치성이 공동브랜드에 대한 태도에 미치는 영향력에서 상호작용 효과가 있는지를 파악하고자 한다. 본 연구에서는 제휴 적합성, 휴먼브랜드와 제품브랜드에 대한 자아일치성, 그리고 세 변수의 상호작용 변수들을 독립변수로 하여 공동브랜드 태도에 대한 회귀분석을 실행하였으며, 상호작용 효과에 대해 단순 기울기 분석과 스포트라이트 분석을 실행하였다. 연구결과 휴먼브랜드와 제품브랜드 간 제휴 적합성은 공동브랜드에 대한 태도에 영향을 주지 않는 것으로 나타났다. 하지만 휴먼브랜드 자아일치성과 제품브랜드 자아일치성 각각은 공동브랜드 태도에 긍정적인 영향을 주는 것으로 나타났다. 또한 제휴 적합성과 휴먼브랜드 자아일치성 및 제품브랜드 자아일치성 세 변수간의 상호작용 효과가 유의미한 것으로 나타났다. 구체적으로 제휴 적합성이 높은 경우에는 제품브랜드와의 자아일치성과 관계없이 휴먼브랜드와의 자아일치성이 높을수록 공동브랜드에 대한 태도가 긍정적인 반면 제휴 적합성이 낮은 경우에는 제품브랜드와의 자아일치성이 높을수록 공동브랜드에 대한 태도가 긍정적이었으며, 휴먼브랜드와의 자아일치성은 제품브랜드와의 자아일치성이 낮을 경우에만 영향을 주는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 결과를 바탕으로 이론적 및 실무적 시사점을 논의하였다.

The Effect of Human Brand Characteristics of Customer Service Employees on Brand Attitude

The Effect of Human Brand Characteristics of Customer Service Employees on Brand Attitude

Role of Humoral and Cell-Mediated Immune Responses against Influenza Infections

This study was designed to determine the extent of exposure of individuals to the avian influenza viruses by evaluating their humoral and cell-mediated immune response. Therefore blood samples were collected from three cohorts i.e. poultry related personals, healthy individuals and flu patients. Serum and PBMC analysis provided the information about humoral and cell-mediated immune responses respectively. The serum samples were examined for the presence of antibodies against indigenous avian influenza strains by using vaccines i.e. avian influenza (H5) monovalent vaccine, avian influenza (H7+H9) bivalent vaccine and commercially available four human international brands of Bird/Swine influenza vaccines i.e. Aventis 2008/2009, Vaxigrip 2009/2010, Agripal 2009/2010 and Vaxigrip 2010/2011 by Dot-Blot assay. In parallel the lymphocytes were isolated from the collected blood of these cohorts and cell mediated immune response was determined by ELI-spot assay and HLA subtyping. The ELI-spot assay of 50 samples of lymphocytes revealed the positive spot for Influenza virus subtype H9. 90% and 70% of the lymphocytes were positive for influenza virus subtype H7 and H5 respectively. Interestingly, it has been concluded from the results that all those individuals who were having antibodies against H5, H7 and H9 were also positive for ELI-spot assay and they never being immunized against influenza viral strains. Whereas HLA results in chicken hawkers and flu patients revealed that MHC Class II alleles are majorly involved in the susceptibility and resistance to influenza infections. Results indicated that majority of the individuals were heterozygous at all HLA Loci, homozygous individuals at MHC Class II loci showed a highly significant association with influenza viral infection. Whereas the Homozygosis at HLA-class I loci A and B had no effect on the rate of disease progression. Such immunogenetical studies will help to develop an enhanced mechanistic understanding of the immune response to seasonal flu responses as well.

To Extend or Not Extend a Human Brand: An Analysis of Perceived Fit and Attitudes Toward Athlete Brand Extensions

While athletes have been building and leveraging their brands for many years by introducing brand extensions, research on sport brand extensions has primarily focused on factors that influence the success of team-related extensions. However, as there is potential risk involved when introducing brand extensions, it is important for athletes to understand how consumers respond to extensions they may introduce. Through the use of self-administered web-based surveys this study provides the initial examination of this topic by exposing participants (n = 292) to hypothetical brand extensions and investigating factors that may influence perceived fit and attitudes toward athlete brand extensions. Partial least squares path modeling suggests that athlete prestige had the most significant effect on fit and attitudes for a brand extension that is considered to be a fit with an athlete’s image, while athlete attachment had the most influence on fit and attitudes for a brand extension with low perceived fit.

Celebrities as human brands: An inquiry on stakeholder-actor co-creation of brand identities

This paper examines the co-creation of human brands exemplified by celebrities in a stakeholder-actor approach. Combining theoretical frameworks of brand identity co-creation and stakeholder paradigms, demonstrates how human brand identities co-create by multiple stakeholder-actors who have resources and incentives in the activities that make up an enterprise of a human brand, including the celebrities themselves, consumer-fans, and business entities. By utilizing observational, archival netnographic data from popular social media platforms, four exemplars of celebrity identities demonstrate the co-creation of human brands. Findings illustrate key stakeholder-actors' participation in the co-creation process as well as sociocultural codes, including social construction and negotiation of identities, parasocialization, influence projection, legitimization, and utilization of human brand identities. These human brand identity dynamics advance a stakeholder-actor paradigm of brand co-creation that adapts to the predominant consumer culture and human ideals that surround the celebrity. Results inform implications and future research on celebrity brand marketing management and co-creation.

A matéria do homem: a expansão dos limites do “ser” na narrativa de Absalão, Absalão! de William Faulkner

O romance Absalão, Absalão! de Willian Faulkner vale-se de recursos narrativos que aproximam a existência de seus personagens, em múltiplos planos narrativos, à materialidade dos textos orais e escritos de que compõem-se as suas memórias. Este trabalho propõe-se a tarefa de refletir sobre o texto como marca humana e extensão do “ser”, com base na narrativa de Faulkner. Para tanto, mencionaremos a questão da autoria e associaremos a ideia do autor morto à escrita tumular, recorrente na obra, para exemplificar a tentativa do homem de sobreviver ao tempo, e nos apoiaremos no pensamento de Henri Bergson que atribui importância ao corpo para a composição da memória em oposição à concepção do cérebro como depósito de memórias. Por fim, consideraremos o esquecimento como forma de escritura e, ainda nos valendo do pensamento de Bergson, que sugere uma matéria contínua, proporemos uma leitura que considera a continuidade universal e inscreve, inclusive, o leitor na narrativa ficcional.

A Classification of Human Brand images According to Brand Personality

A Classification of Human Brand images According to Brand Personality

The evolution of fan kingdom: the rising, expansion, and challenges of human brands

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss four main research questions which are as follows: how does a consumer turn into a devoted fan? How does a devoted fan react to the expansion of a human brand? What kind of strategies does a devoted fan take when facing challenges encountered by a human brand? And are devoted fans homogeneous, or can they be further divided into different subgroups? Design/methodology/approach The basis of grounded theory process is intensive depth interviews with 14 devoted fans of a famous Taiwanese pop singer in a qualitative manner along with content analysis of messages from online fan clubs. Findings Using the metaphor of kingdom to parallel the phenomenon of fandom, the research also explicates the importance of initial brand position, and the construction and expansion from the core castle – the core positioning of the human brand – to become a kingdom where devoted fans swear to be loyal to the human brand and cross-buy the derivative products of the latter. Five fan’s subgroup and a theoretical framework are obtained. Originality/value The theoretical framework derived in this study explicates how consumers’ initial perceptions of the human brand are formed and reinforced and how they become different kinds of fans which in turn influence the strategies they take in the face of the expansion or withdraw of the human brand.

Classifying the narrated #selfie: genre typing human-branding activity

Purpose This paper explores the purposive use of the selfie in the construction of personal narratives that develop and support an individual’s human brand. Selfies were divided into archetypical clusters of “genres” that reflected the combined story told through Instagram image and accompanying text captions. Design/methodology/approach The analysis drew a randomized sample of 1,000 images with accompanying text from a large capture of 3,300 English language captioned selfies. Coding for semantic and semiotic data used a three-wave technique to overcome interpretive limitations. Findings Based on their structural characteristics, seven genre types emerged from the coded sample set. These primary genres of selfie meta-narratives are autobiography, parody, propaganda, romance, self-help, travel diary and coffee-table book. Research limitations/implications The research is limited in generalization to the Instagram photo-sharing app platform by design. Samples were taken from the app due both to its popularity and its capacity to annotate images. Selfies conducted in non-public, non-annotation-based apps may produce alternative genres and classifications. Practical implications The paper presents a genre classification to examine how selfies are used to “show, not tell” a portion of the consumer’s life story. Brands, firms and marketers can apply genres to examine the selfie types that best connect with the identity of their brands and consumers, based on how their consumers communicate within the Instagram network. Social implications Selfies are an oft pathologized and moralized aspect of consumer conduct. We present a view of the selfie as a deliberate, consciously considered communication approach to maintaining social bonds between friends, family and wider audience. Selfies are presented as a combined effect of consumption of a social media service (Instagram) and the co-production of valued content (the selfie) that recognizes the individual as an active constructor of their digital self. Originality/value The paper outlines a novel framework of selfie genres to classify the deliberate human-brand narratives expressed in selfies. By taking a narrative perspective to the Instagram selfie practice, the genre type captures the combined effect of the mimesis and diegesis, where the mimesis showing of self is contextualized with the diegesis of the provided captions to capture an intentional storytelling act of image and text.

Royalty: marketplace icons

ABSTRACTThe term “royalty” connotes people who either occupy the role of monarchs in society, or who are related to these figures by blood or marriage. Although many royal houses around the world occupy a symbolic/ceremonial rather than a political role, royalty and the “human brands” royal families contain remain important sources of aspirational and conspicuous consumption. In this essay, we focus on how the British Royal Family Brand (BRFB; Otnes, Cele C. and Pauline Maclaran. 2015. Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.) has remained the most visible and impactful royal variant in the world, even as its economic and political influence, and that of Britain, has waned. We discuss the influence of the BRFB in fueling consumption practices pertaining to commemorative purchasing and collecting, heritage management, perpetuating mass and social media narratives, supporting and perpetuating brands, and spawning and maintaining touristic trends. We observe that successful royal influence is due in part to the ability to leverage key universal narratives (e.g. the triumph of the underdog) and to tap into consumers’ desires to vicariously or actively engage with lifestyles typically accessible only to people who occupy the highest social stratum in their respective cultures. We discuss the implications of royalty on consumer culture, and suggest areas of future research.

Counteracting Domain Loss and Epistemicide in Specialized Discourse: A Case Study on the Translation of Anglophone Metaphors to French

The dominance of English as the world language of publication has had a decisive impact on the dissemination of information and innovation across cultures, with a resulting tendency to a standardization of scientific conceptualization. This dominance does not only impact scientific and academic discourse, but also the whole range of professional and technical texts representative of various specialized discourses. This paper advocates engaging in the practice of dynamic translation to keep non-English specialized languages alive. Advanced students’ analysis of translation projects yields revealing examples of conflicting views of the world, between English and French, in emerging and controversial fields such as “shadow banking” or “human branding”. The students’ evaluation of alternative solutions to problems of equivalence highlights the cultural gaps which exist within global fields of knowledge and can be interpreted in terms of the intercultural and interlinguistic transfer of specialized metaphor. It is shown that the practice and analysis of translation provide an appropriate approach for a better understanding of languages for specific purposes (LSP) and the development of awareness of domain loss and epistemicide.