CHAPTER 2
Review of Related Literature
If we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes almost all the difference (Harrison and Huntington, 2000). Yet culture, in the sense of the inner values and attitudes that guide a population, frightens scholars. It has a sulfuric odor of race and inheritance, an air of immutability. In thoughtful moments, economists and other social scientists recognize that this is not true, and indeed they salute examples of cultural change for the better while deploring changes for the worse (Harrison and Huntington, 2000). But applauding or deploring implies the passivity of the viewer--an inability to use knowledge to shape people and things. The technician would rather change interest and exchange rates, free up trade, alter political institutions, manage. Besides, criticisms of culture cut close to the ego and injure identity and self-esteem (Harrison and Huntington, 2000), not only on the individual level but on an entire country. Because culture and economic performance are linked, changes in one will work back on the other.
Global branding propelled by the economic activity of globalization paved the way for an integrated market that crosses cultural borders. As such, the focus on the local brands had been diminished and dwarfed by the multi-national companies who are more powerful in terms of brand recall and financial stability. Thus, their ability to manipulate cultural preferences is enhanced. Issues such as national identity and local fashion culture had been the main argument against the entry of global brands in the local market. However, its inevitability is in the offing.
Klamer (1996) contended that his impression that the standard economic approach to national identity is a mess. It wobbles between the assumption of irrelevance of nationhood to rational behavior of firms, families and governments and implicit nationalism (national income, national competitiveness, and so on); between reduction of national identification to maximization of wealth or welfare and non-economic explanation, and between seeing nations as bearers of modernization and as primitive, anti-capitalist forces (Klamer, 1996). Further, the mess is unwarranted, since economic science in the sense of political economy contains the intellectual credentials and advanced tools of analysis to indigenize national identity and to enrich both its own stock of knowledge and the insight of the public (Klamer, 1996).
Ferguson’s (1992) central premise about media globalization and nations in particular espouses that a globalist market need not necessarily be contained on a cultural universalism but rather, the reality would remain that there will always be economic nationalism. As such, there is no actual economic anarchy but a competitive economic nationalism focused on information and cultural industries that drives global capitalism into the twenty-first century (Ferguson, 1992). Such contradictions point to continuing problems with beliefs about globalization as the definitional force majeur of late-twentieth-century life. Nations and nationalism, like ethnics and tribalism, far from dissolving into a system of impersonal economic or technological forces or culturally fragmented spheres, have rarely been as visible or potent (Ferguson, 1992).
The counter-arguments from globalist true believers, even critics, cite media technology, popular culture, markets, and consumption flow data as irrefutable signifiers of a more interdependent global capitalist system and consumer marketplace (Ferguson, 1992). However, when we look behind the rhetorical curtain of market globalism, we find neither the material condition nor its assumed impact to be as inevitable or universal as alleged. Globalism and localism co-exist in the 1990s in a context of transnational economic interdependence fed by direct foreign investment (DFI), common patterns of material and cultural consumption, and a pervasive, global information and entertainment system of satellite, computer, cable, VCR, telephone, fax, television, and digital technologies (Ferguson, 1992).
The Language of ClothingAn individual's clothing expresses meaning, contrary to what others saw as "a picture is worth a thousand words" and generally concede that dress and ornament are elements in a communication system. Social scientists recognize that a person's attire can indicate either conformity or resistance to socially defined expectations for behavior (Rubenstein, 1995). Writing on the changes that occurred in the early part of the nineteenth century in London and Paris, Richard Sennett (1974 cited in Rubenstein, 1995) pointed out that standardized modes of dress offered a protective "cover-up" at a time when the distinction between private space and public space first emerged. When one lived and worked among strangers rather than family members, there was a need to protect one's self and one's inner feelings. Wearing the expected mode of dress enabled individuals to move easily among the various spheres of social life(Rubenstein, 1995).
There has always been some awareness of the role clothing plays in social life but the ways in which visual images direct, affect, and reflect societal, cultural, and personal discourse have not been fully appreciated.
In his article "Fashion," George Simmel ( [1904] 1957 cite in Rubenstein, 1995) observed that fashion, the latest desired appearance, allows for personal modification, enabling the individual to pursue competing desires for group identity and individual expression. There is no institution, "no law, no estate of life which can uniformly satisfy the opposing principles of uniformity and individuality better than fashion." The self is also an audience, and clothing allows individuals to view themselves as social objects. By extricating the self from a setting or situation, the individual can scrutinize the image he or she presents in view of the social response that is desired. This separation and objectification, in turn, allows the individual to correct the image if necessary (Rubenstein, 1995).
Although thrones, crowns, and pageantry are mostly gone, and the structure and expression of social life have changed, the inner necessities that animate social life have not (Rubenstein, 1995). Clothing signs enable a political authority, such as the police, to define itself and advance its claims. In the form of a visual image that transmits meaning, a clothing sign provides the cultural frame within which the political authority can function. Required attire, clothing signs specify a range of feelings and behaviors that are expected (Rubenstein, 1995)
Familiarity with these images makes the existence of clothing signs inconspicuous, often too mundane to be consciously noted. More likely to be noticed are changes, increases or decreases, in the use of clothing signs (Rubenstein. 1995). Clothing symbols may also be misinterpreted and their meaning trivialized. Clothing symbols are an important component of a people's cultural heritage (Rubenstein, 1995).
The Emergence of Fashion CultureRubenstein (1995) outlined the emergence of a fashion culture by tracing it to the early royalties. The court of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy (d. 1467), is considered "the cradle" of fashion. Philip exploited the resources available in the territory he controlled to create new clothing styles. Until this time Paris had been the center of luxurious court dress. As mentioned, the International Gothic Style had been generated in Paris in about 1380, and attire in this style was worn in many of the courts in Europe, which were connected through a complex system of politics and marriage. After the beginning of the fifteenth century, however, Paris was eclipsed as the center of court dress by the court in the northern French duchy of Burgundy. This area lay along the spine of Europe, directly within the Mediterranean trade route for goods being transported to the North Sea and England. 3 People, talent, and commodities flowed into its markets. Members of the court took increased interest in their clothes, adorning themselves with elaborate costumes to display wealth and an awareness of style (Rubenstein, 1995)
In the post-Civil War years, the boundary between youth and old age began to break down. The separate forces of feminism and the commercial beauty culture were behind the changes in society's perception of older women (Rubenstein, 1995). Fashion magazines and beauty advice books recommended that women of all ages should be permitted and even encouraged to look as young as they wished (Rubenstein, 1995).
Fashion urges people to deconstruct the cultural attitudes that had been with their society for a long time. The fashion industry urged people to transform their clothed appearance in accordance with a set of quite traditional body ideals and signifiers of femininity, marketed to them as entirely new (Maynard, 1995). For instance, these ideals, spelled out via a rhetorical language and imagery expressing ideas about women's individualized sexuality and self-fulfillment, were conceptualized in the fashion for the 'New Look'--a style nevertheless redolent with references to the upper-bourgeois fashions of the late nineteenth century (Maynard, 1995). The style constituted part of the historical shifts marking out feminine desirability, increasingly defined during the 1930s and 1940s in terms of the dynamics of heterosexual attractiveness. The new femininity of 'sex appeal', and its 'Look', was significant in that it signaled changes to the ideals of femininity of previous decades, towards more modern incitements to sexual pleasure, especially suited to youthful consumers (Maynard, 1995).
The style in question, initially conceived by the couture industry in Paris, and later given the label of the 'New Look' by the Americans, was a deliberate and nostalgic evocation of the luxury of the Belle Epoque in the years leading up to the First World War (Maynard, 1995). Picture Post, in 1947, described in glowing terms this vanished era which the 'Look' recalled. The new lavish use of furs, brocades like shimmering moonlight, glittering gold, silver and pearl-encrusted embroidery, and rustling taffetas, covered with cobweb fine lace, marked a return to the days when fashion was the prerogative of the wealthy, leisured woman and not the everyday concern of the typist, saleswoman, or housewife (Maynard, 1995).
The American and World Culture
There is a good chance that you or someone close to you is wearing clothing imported from Latin America. A quick check of the label may reveal that it is a shirt from the Gap made in Honduras, a pair of Lee Ryder jeans made in Brazil, Bali underpants made in Guatemala, a Levi's golf shirt made in the Dominican Republic, or a Haggar sports jacket made in Colombia (Figueroa, 1996).
Garments produced in Latin America and imported into the United States represent a growing segment of the U.S. clothing market. As industry analysts, business people and, increasingly, workers, realize, such a development is by no means accidental. It is the product of a search for higher profits by U.S. apparel companies, by some of their competitors like Korean-owned contractors, and, above all, by large clothing buyers such as Wal-Mart and Macy's at the expense of low-wage labor in Latin America. It is also the product of trade policies and political decisions adopted by the U.S. and Latin American governments (Figueroa, 1996).
Clothing is big business. In the United States, wholesale apparel sales were $78.4 billion while retail sales were $211 billion in 1994.1 There are about 30,000 clothing manufacturers in the United States, which employ over 800,000 production workers in this country (down 30% from the mid-1970s). They directly or indirectly employ at least 400,000 people overseas. More textile and apparel is produced and sold today in the United States than at any other time in the nation's history (Figueroa, 1996).
The U.S. clothing market, one of the most attractive in the world, has become the final destination for an increasing amount of apparel assembled overseas, much of it in Latin America. Imported clothing represented 66% of total sales in the U.S. clothing market in 1992 compared to only 28% in 1973. Likewise, textile imports have grown from 5.8% of the U.S. market in 1973 to 21.7% in 1992.2 The share for garments imported from Latin America under special duty-free tariff programs has increased from 3.9% of the U.S. clothing market in 1970 to 16.7% in 1993 (Figueroa, 1996).
The industry throughout the Americas is undergoing significant changes, which have produced clear winners and losers. Increased market integration -- in the wake of neoliberal economic restructuring and "free-trade" accords -- means that a particular country's role in the industry is determined to a large extent by the size of its domestic market, its level of industrialization, and its access to modern technology (Figueroa, 1996).
Branding
Branding creates attachments between consumers and brand: the stronger the attachment, the better the branding.
Nothing connected with "branding" should surprise anyone any more (Frank, 2001). Whenever the word is spoken, it seems, there instantly follows some scarcely believable anecdote of corporations expanding, metastasizing, covering more and more of our world and our culture, putting their mark in some unthinkable new spot or on some inviolable hero, ransacking the temples of art, laying claim to the legacy of the historical avant-garde, to that of religion, of bohemia, of the civil rights movement, of the left itself. We ride in subway cars whose every surface promotes an allergy remedy or the offerings of a TV network. We hear of "masterbrands" and "megabrands" (Frank, 2001). And the claims attached to brands grow constantly: no longer simple guarantees of quality, brands are now thought to have a more high-minded aspect (Frank, 2001). The brand was everything, the very foundation of economic life. The brand was all that would survive, zealously protected and polished by a core of managerial workers, while the physical operations of the corporation were "outsourced" to those lands where people work for next to nothing (Frank, 2001).
The most important thing to understand about integrated branding is that it is a model for building the most important asset any company has--its relationship with its customers (Lepla, 1999). If you understand that your best customer is the one you already have, then creating a rational system for deepening customer relationships is the logical next step (Lepla, 1999).
Basing your product or service offerings on an integrated brand allows your organization to develop more saleable products over the long term by keeping it focused on your strengths as an organization. This focus opens it to new possibilities by broadening the corporate aperture from looking at what you are producing right now to looking at the bigger picture. Seeing the big picture is an essential prerequisite to company longevity. Strategy based solely on current product or service uniqueness ultimately results in decreasing market share, lower margins, missed opportunities, and price wars (Lepla, 1999).Integrated branding helps companies understand who they are and how to use that knowledge consistently to create better results. As with all worthwhile change, the process takes some investment in time and elbow grease up front, but results in a huge payoff (Lepla, 1999).
Brand breadth is a function of not only the number and variability of products represented by the brand but also of the strength of association between the brand and the products it represents (Dawar, 1996). The strength of association is reflected in the retrievability from memory of product associations. This, in turn, influences the evaluation of fit of brand extensions. Two types of brands were studied: those with a strong association to a single product (and weaker associations with other products) and those with strong associations to multiple products. Results from an experiment showed that for brands with a single product association, brand knowledge and context interact to influence evaluations of fit for extensions to products weakly associated with the brand. For brands strongly associated with more than 1 product, context influences evaluations of the fit of brand extensions (Dawar, 1996).
Given the importance of these associations, brand-extension researchers are now focusing on acquiring a deeper understanding of how cognitive representations of brands influence the evaluations of the fit of extensions with the original brand (Dawar, 1996). Park, Milberg, and Lawson ( 1991 ) reported that perceptions of brand-extension fit depend not only on similarity of product-based aspects, such as features or attributes, but also on the consistency of the extension product with an abstract mental representation, such as the brand-name concept.
Primarily, branding starts with the effective use of media as an advertisement tool. Cultural diversity and the penchant for global fashion are increasingly reinforced in the media. Preferences for clothes, accessories and other fashion items rest on how a product is shown and perceived by the consumers around the world. Thus, fashion advertisements are not only focused on a specific market but rather on the global market by universalizing their product and thus their brands. The potential influence of globally shared television images, the informational power of the Internet, or how displays of popular culture artifacts or consumer goods proffer modes of articulation for sharing surface identities based on styles (Ferguson, 1992).
Being, first of all, a pragmatic market instrument, ads have an important side effect: they reproduce dominant ideologies, social structure, power relations and a global cultural. The products consume by individuals are wide spread markers of their social status, and they can be analyzed as second-order signs, in Barthes's terms, or to put it another way, as myths of consumer society: goods are imagined as magic latchkeys, letting one to come into the dream world (Ross, 2000). Fairytale narrative in a 30-second advertisement. Role of advertisements in socialization and construction of identity; representations of males and females and construction of their subject positions in advertisements (Ross, 2000).
New brand extensions are generally supported by substantial communication efforts to build on existing product associations (Dawar, 1996). For brands with a single strong product association, and for extensions close to that product, communication could cue either the strongly or the weakly associated product. However, if the extension is close to the weakly associated product, context cues should primarily focus on it, especially if the target consumers are knowledgeable about the brand. Activating the strongly associated product would be a mistake in this communications should cue the product close to the extension product in order to maximize consumer perceptions of fit (Dawar, 1996).
Dawar (1996) argued that the proximity construct refers to the distance of extensions from the brand concept. The strength of brand-product association was used to refer to the relation between the brand and its associations with existing products. However, empirically in psychological research, the two constructs are often treated similarly in that both distance and strength of association are measured using response latency. We believe these two constructs are independent and can be tapped using different measures. In this study we used response latency measures to determine strength of association and a card-sorting task to determine proximity-distance. Future research could provide additional insight into the orthogonality of these constructs by crossing levels of the two constructs.
The memorability of a brand name and of copy items in print ads is enhanced by relations between the element to be remembered and other ad elements (Millard and Schmitt, 1993). Differences in brand-name memory were stronger on unaided recall measures than on brand-name recognition or brand-name matching measures. As argued before, this result suggests that interrelations among ad components are especially valuable for retrieval processes (Millard and Schmitt, 1993). It could be argued, however, that related ad elements provide redundant information which allows for guessing; that is, if an individual is exposed to the same information three times, then he or she has to remember less information than when three different items of information are presented. We believe, however, that it is not clear how an individual could find information to be redundant without noticing the relation between the two concepts that supposedly constitute redundancy.
That is, more fashion-conscious consumers may be more practiced in remembering brand names and brand characteristics and therefore may have a strategic advantage in learning them
Consumer Behavior
Research in consumer behavior has provided many insights into how consumers respond affectively and make behavioral commitments to items within a set of alternatives such as brands of toothpaste or makes of automobile. However, consumer researchers have rarely gone beyond the selection or preference stage
Previous work in consumer research has left questions concerning the duration of consumption largely unexplored and, in particular, has neglected the possible role of emotions in determining the length of time that consumers devote to consumption experiences (Gardner and Holbrook, 1993). Gardner and Holbrooks’ (1993) study on the effect of advertisement on radio and television proposes an approach to investigating these questions and illustrates its application to the context of examining the connection between emotional responses and listening receptivity to music. In an individually administered listening task, 58 subjects listened to these musical selections in different random orders for as long as they wanted before rating their feelings on the Affect Grid. Listening time was measured unobtrusively when rewinding the tapes between sessions with subjects. As hypothesized, the results show that log (tempo) strongly affects arousal, that listening time follows a nonmonotonic relation which peaks at intermediate levels of arousal, and that these peaks shift from left to right as pleasure increases.
One of the major sources of value created by a brand lies in the memorial associations consumers have for products sold with that brand brand-building efforts that seek to develop greater brand awareness and foster favorable brand attitudes among consumers. A brand that is strongly associated with a particular product category will often enjoy substantial success in that category because it can effectively isolate itself from competing brands (Williams, 1992).
Farquhar’s (1996) research investigated how a consumer's cognitive structure for a brand in a given product category affects the possible transfer of associations to other product categories. One key factor in evaluating such possible brand extensions is dominance, which can be defined as the strength of the directional association between the parent category and the branded product (Farquhar, 1996). Likewise, another important factor is the relatedness of the brand's parent category and the target category of the proposed extension. The 1st experiment measured dominance and relatedness via response latencies to recognize brand extensions. The 2nd experiment demonstrated that consumers' affect for strongly category-dominant brands (a) transfers better to an extension when the proposed extension is closely rather than distantly related to the parent category and (b) transfers better than a weakly category-dominant brand's affect. Together, the research demonstrated that consumers' response times to disconfirm the existence of product-brand pairs is related to their transfer of affect from the brand to the proposed product category. This disconfirmation method could be used as an unobtrusive measure for determining brand boundaries. The attractiveness of potential brand extensions may thus be determined without consumers making any judgments about a proposed extension other than answering whether or not it exists (Farquhar, 1996).
Farquhar’s (1996) results support the assertions in H2 about consumers' ability to learn new associations. Subjects were better able to recall the proposed extension for strongly category-dominant versus weaker brands, and for closely versus distantly related target categories. The main effect of category dominance on recall may have been greater if we had chosen brands with greater separation in the parent categories. The rather distant target categories selected probably contributed to the strong main effect for intercategory relatedness. On the other hand, the affect transfer patterns across categories do not mirror the recall data for learning new associations. Dominance and relatedness interact only for affect transfer. Although there are strong main effects for both dominance and relatedness, the affect associated with a strongly category-dominant brand transfers to an extended product best when the target category is closely related to the parent category. Thus, attitude differences are not due simply to subjects liking only what they could recall; rather, the brand transfers its associated affect across categories. Nevertheless, there is a limit to how far the brand can be stretched--the target category must be closely related to the parent category (Farquhar, 1996).
In general, the relational model in that consumers' learning and liking of proposed brand extensions are influenced by two factors: the dominance of the brand in its parent category and the relatedness of the parent category to the target category of the proposed extension. Learning new associations for brand extensions is easier for (a) brands that are strongly (vs. weakly) category dominant and for (b) target categories that are closely (vs. distantly) related to the brand's parent category. It also demonstrated that the affect associated with strongly category-dominant brands transfers to an extension primarily when the target category is closely related to the parent category. Finally, controlling for category dominance, consumers' response latency to disconfirm the existence of a hypothetical extension is inversely related to the affect transferred to the extension (Farquhar, 1996).
From a managerial perspective, a strong category-to-brand association is both a blessing and a curse. Strongly category-dominant brands have widespread customer recognition and often enjoy substantial market share. But this strength in the parent category may also limit the brand's direct extendibility to other product categories. A strong category-to-brand association appears to restrict a brand's ability to transfer affect across categories, underscoring the need for caution in extension decisions for brands that might appear to be natural platforms for building equity.
Psychology of Global Fashion Culture
Perhaps, the main issue in global branding, psychology of the consumers has been the main culprit in the establishments of global brands. Radford (1993) first revealed the hazards of psychological perspectives of fashion when they are detached from any recognition of the complex particularities of social and historical patterns. But secondly I hope to show how this psychoanalytic approach, far from maintaining any position of scientific objectivity, in fact reflects disguised misogynistic and hornophobic currents of thought, prevalent within a given social ideology. Fashion has throughout history been exposed to a constant didactic of disapproval. Indeed the emergence of fashion as a topic for comment in the first place seems to have arisen from the desire to censure it. Whether the complaint is against excessive show of wealth or against sexual immodesty, whether the appeal emanates from the values of Christianity or Humanism, the sins of pride and lust (note the church Latin for lust is 'luxuria") are accusations which are inextricably woven into the history of fashion. So it is perhaps not so surprising, then, that psychology should be drawn into collusion with the puritanical and patriarchal aims of post-Second World War American ideology, in supplying a more modern basis for constraining self-expression in terms of fashion and personal appearance, by marginalizing fashion as potentially deviant and dangerous (Radford, 1993).
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Dawar, Niraj, Extensions of Broad Brands: The Role of Retrieval in Evaluations of Fit, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996
Farquhar, Peter, Impact of Dominance and Relatedness on Brand Extensions, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996
Ferguson, M. (in press). Media globalization: Myths, markets and identities. London: Sage.
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