Special Session: Luxury Consumer Perceptions of Brand Charisma: An Abstract

Abstract

Research has established that consumers not only seek out brands for the instrumental and functional roles they serve, they also seek meaningful connections with brands and their corporate entities (Aaker 2012). As a result, companies build brand equity through brand personalities that encourage consumer interactions and build relationships (Lloyd and Woodside 2013). A brand personality refers to the overall persona created by a cluster of human-like characteristics attributed to a brand name (Azoulay and Kapferer 2003). In the context of relationships between luxury brands and their consumers however, we argue that traditional views of brand personality are less relevant since luxury brand-consumer relationships transcend functional relationships (Keller et al. 2011). Given the role of emotional and transformative brand values in luxury branding, we propose that brand charisma, as a brand personality is more likely to resonate with luxury brand consumers. Despite the breadth of research examining charismatic leadership in the psychology and management literature, research on charisma and its relationship to brands has remained limited due in part to the lack of consensus regarding what brand charisma really is. The most useful definition of charisma seems to be in terms of attributions of charisma to a leader by followers (consumers) who identify strongly with the leader (the brand) (House 1977). The follower’s attribution of charisma thus depends on the observed behavior of the leader. Brand charisma is therefore socially constructed and an observable behavioral process. Surprisingly, in brand-consumer relationships, little is known about the behavioral components responsible for such attributions. Against this backdrop, the objective of this paper is to define the conceptual domain of luxury brand charisma and its foundational dimensions. We present an exploratory study to shed light on the behavioral attributes of charismatic luxury brands. Our research has the potential to break new ground in academic brand research and specifically in the emerging area of luxury brand management.