"Double-Standard" Or "Sensible Positioning": What Factors Influence Consumers’ Authenticity Evaluation of Off-Shore Manufactured Brands?

This paper proposes that in the situation of off-shore manufactured brands where indexical authenticity is inherently low, higher authenticity evaluation can be managed and communicated via marketing positioning strategy that takes into account both brand type and consumer expertise and utilizes cues from different dimensions of authenticity. In two experimental studies we found that: (1) a brand elicits higher authenticity evaluation when paired with incongruent marketing positioning images than when paired with congruent marketing positioning images and (2) consumers’ expertise significantly influence their ability to process brand attributes, which in turn affects their authenticity evaluation of the brand. The findings have important implications for market positioning and brand management.

Citation:

Martin Jen-Yuan Liu and Qing Wang (2009) ,""Double-Standard" Or "Sensible Positioning": What Factors Influence Consumers’ Authenticity Evaluation of Off-Shore Manufactured Brands?", in AP - Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 8, eds. Sridhar Samu, Rajiv Vaidyanathan, and Dipankar Chakravarti, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 44-46.