Annie Hagen Danbury

Online behaviour of luxury fashion brand advocates

Purpose – Over the past few years online fashion communities have proliferated becoming an increasingly powerful forum for user-generated content, and consequently, the fashion industry has shown great interest in such communities. The purpose of this paper is to review and analyse brand advocacy behaviour within luxury brand accessory forums: to analyse the role these communities play in influencing purchase intention; assessing their contribution to fashion brand love. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopted a netnographic approach to the phenomenon of online luxury accessory communities. The research reports observational data including blog texts and audience comments for four popular forums: The Purse Forum, The Fashion Spot, The Bag Forum (TBF) and Shoe Forum (SF). Although the forums are open to all and are designed to be internationally relevant; the observations were conducted from a base in the UK. Findings – Findings indicate that informants display some unifying characteristics cluster...

Making the brand appealing: advertising strategies and consumers' attitude towards UK retail bank brands

Purpose The present state of the financial services industry suggests the need for banks to appeal to consumers’ emotions with the aim of improving their reputation; this study aims to explore how UK banks are using emotional appeals in their advertisements and how this shapes consumers’ attitudes towards their brands. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis in a two-stage study – Study 1 analysed the content of 1,274 UK bank advertisements to understand how the banks convey emotional appeals, whereas Study 2 elicited consumers’ perceptions of these advertising appeals and how they influenced their attitudes through semi-structured interview with 33 UK retail bank customers in London and Luton. Findings UK banks are using emotional appeals in their marketing communication strategies. The qualitative findings highlight the bi-dimensional nature of feelings towards the advertisements and how this relates to the brand. There is a lacklustre attitude towards the brands; there was no sense of pride in associating with any bank, even with though there are possibilities of switching; and consumers feel there is no better offer elsewhere as all banks are the same. Practical implications Bank brands should present distinct values about their services to the target audience, endeavour to build relationships with existing customers and reward loyalty. Importantly, financial brands need to engage in and highlight charitable activities and any corporate social responsibility as this can help to improve consumers’ attitudes as they often consider bank brands greedy and selfish. Originality/value Qualitative research methodology was adopted to better understand consumers’ attitudes towards UK retail bank brands.

Emotional appeals in UK business-to-business financial services advertisements

© 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is twofold: to analyse the use of emotional appeals in business-to-business (B2B) bank advertisements and to understand business owners’ perceptions of such appeals. Design/methodology/approach: In Study 1,834 print advertisements collected from British newspapers were content analysed. In Study 2, semi-structured interviews with 17 business owners operating a business current account with a British bank were carried out. Findings: Emotional appeals are embedded in B2B financial services advertisements, and business owners acknowledge the presence of emotional appeals; however, the perceived congruency between emotional appeal and financial services could not be established as participants reported a largely utilitarian, need- and benefit-driven decision-making process. Research limitations/implications: Accurately measuring emotions aroused through advertisements is considered a limitation. In addition, the sample of participants considered for this research project was small and medium-sized business owners. Practical implications: Emotional appeals should be used in conjunction with detailed rational information about financial products, as emotional appeals only arouse interest. Relationship is considered crucial in capitalising on the emotionally appealing advertisements. Customers must feel appreciated and loyalty should be rewarded. Originality/value: The paper responds to numerous calls for more research into the role of emotional influences on the relationships in a B2B context and on the behaviour of business customers.