Things Fall Apart: The Dynamics of Brand Audience Dissipation

2014/10/14 by Marie-Agnès Parmentier, Marie‐Agnès Parmentier, Eileen Fischer · 4 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification #Digital Marketing and Social Media #Media, Gender, and Advertising

paper · doi:10.1086/678907

Abstract

Much prior work illuminates how fans of a brand can contribute to the value enjoyed by other members of its audience, but little is known about any processes by which fans contribute to the dissipation of that audience. Using longitudinal data on America's Next Top Model, a serial brand, and conceptualizing brands as assemblages of heterogeneous components, this article examines how fans can contribute to the destabilization of a brand's identity and fuel the dissipation of audiences of which they have been members. This work suggests that explanations focusing on satiation, psychology, or semiotics are inadequate to account for dissipation in the audience for serial brands. Moreover, the perspective advanced here highlights how fans can create doppelgänger brand images and contribute to the co-destruction of serial brands they have avidly followed.

Citations

• The Dynamics of Brand Legitimacy: An Interpretive Study in the Gay Men's Community: Table 1
• Human Brands: Investigating Antecedents to Consumers’ Strong Attachments to Celebrities
• The Underdog Effect: The Marketing of Disadvantage and Determination through Brand Biography

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