Authored by Jan CL König*
Abstract
In a spontaneous comparison, one might come to the conclusion that Savile Row shops sell real luxury, while on New Bond Street they simply sell expensive products. This conclusion includes reasons that can be understood by analyzing a typical traditional bespoke tailor shop with semiotic approaches. In our analysis, we applied Charles Peirce’s semiotic trichotomies to classify the signs of brand heritage, focusing on presented brand identities that appear in a structured construct that we call the molecule of the brand. Hence, the analysis leads to conclusions regarding what kind of signs produce a unique brand identity and how they refer to this identity concretely. Our findings offer a precise determination and evaluation of a luxury brand’s heritage management and presentation as well as a new understanding of heritage branding, the identity of brands, and the context in which they are created.
Keywords: Brand semiotics; Luxury brand management; Brand heritage; Brand identity; Luxury consumption; Myth; Framing
Introduction
London’s Savile Row is known worldwide for its bespoke tailors and hosts shops of traditional luxury [1], some of which can be regarded as being quietly legendary. Those shops are remarkable at creating an old-style luxury atmosphere using complex signs and textures to create a traditional luxury myth and address certain customers who identify themselves with the brand [2]. For the analysis of a luxury brand store with a traditional heritage, we apply a semiotic approach that eventually leads to a specific distinction of a unique brand heritage. Despite the increasing awareness of semiotic approaches in the marketing and management domains, current literature and case studies only use the surface of semiotics. We try to fill this gap and present a complex concept by applying the semiotic approach to the field of luxury brand management. Even though many different semiotic approaches exist, Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy is still one of the most complex, with three trichotomies and main subcategories, thus allowing for a precise analysis and a classification of meaningful significations. The design of a traditional luxury store was d to study the different simple and very complex structures of the sign meanings concerning the corporate culture of the luxury brand. Our results reveal the necessity of creating a traditional luxury store design using several complex and structured signs and meanings, including a narrative frame [3], thus leading to the myth of old-style luxury branding. With reference to the aforementioned concept of Peirce, our approach has the potential for further semiotic research not only for luxury fashion but also for several fields of marketing and management. Similarly, compiling a framework for brands with a traditional heritage must be a company’s core interest. Due to the compiled semiotic concept analyzing heritage framing, the implications of our study include advice regarding the use of signs for the creation of an elegant and old-fashioned atmosphere for luxury shops. The atmosphere of a luxury store can therefore represent the identity of a brand based on the specific meanings of signs. Nonetheless, the semiotic concept might also be a valid tool for further advertising or brand semiotics research in marketing and management.
Background
There is little consensus about the applied semiotic phenomena in luxury, although the semiotic concept seems to be an essential and inevitable part of luxury brand heritage. To have a better understanding of this phenomena, the principles of brand heritage from the luxury value perspective are discussed first and then followed by a brief introduction to Pierce’ semiotic philosophies, which will be the methodical background of our study.
Luxury values and brand heritage
The deep-rooted history of traditional craftsmanship in family business with well-known founding fathers is especially associated with luxury brands. It becomes evident that authenticity and emotions from the past represent relevant key elements of an advanced, well- positioned luxury brand, thus creating the core part of brand heritage. Urde M, et al. [4] define the heritage of luxury brands as “a dimension of a brand’s identity found in its track record, longevity, core values, use of symbols and particularly in an organizational belief that its history is important“. According to this, a brand with a strong heritage is assumed to be very genuine, dependable and trustworthy [5,6]. Regarding the wide range of the differentiation and authenticity due to the early roots, the heritage of luxury brands can be a significant value driver [7]. Through heritage, we can “define these brands today and add value, especially when they are re- interpreted in a contemporary light”. In the times of a fast-changing digital environment, luxury brands have to challenge the link between the past and the present in a way that is more meaningful, modern and history-charged [8].
As consumers are increasingly aware of a brand’s origin, the heritage of a luxury brand is an essential part of the relationship between the customer and the brand that is seeking the customer’s loyalty [9]. This also has effect on a brand’s shop architecture: “In a consumer-driven retail environment, brands seek to build strong customer relationships by providing dazzling stimuli […]” [10].
Existing research on the influence of brand heritage in the luxury industry found evidence for a causal relationship between brand heritage and brand luxury, as well as significant impacts on a customer’s perceived value and resulting effects on brand strength.
Indeed, a causal relationship can be observed between the brand, heritage, and luxury, as the impacts on perceived value and the effects on a brand’s strength are highly significant [11]. However, a luxury brand, which symbolizes and represents the customer´s lifestyle, is always required [12]. Overall, brand heritage may be regarded as one of the major components for building successful luxury brands, which is an assumption that leads to the creation of a sustainable unique brand personality, brand meaning, and core values and manifests in the tension between the past, present and future.
Semiotic approaches for the meaning of brand
The term semiotics is typically related to the antique Greek phrase of σημεῖον (semion), which means sign [13]. By deriving from an original phrase and referring to an academic concept, semiotics implies a specific meaning. Thus, the core characteristic of semiotics can be described and interpreted as the meaning of signs.
Unlike the traditional quantitative methods in marketing and management that imply the investigation of several stimuli and their effects, the qualitative semiotic approach examines the consistence and the creation of the stimuli – i.e., the signs. With representatives such as Charles Peirce in the early 20th century and Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Eco, and Jakobson later on, semiotic studies in the humanities became very popular during the pragmatic turn. Many known disciplinary phrases in the humanities, especially the linguistic domain, have been influenced by the semiotic approach. Though there is a strong interest for marketing and management to identify the consistency and quality of signs for the creation of brands, semiotics was first recognized for marketing and management in the 1980s [14-17]. Nevertheless, quantitative approaches investigating stimulus-response models are the most commonly used, and the semiotic approach as a productive methodology has gained more importance in recent years [13,18- 26], as well as König, et al. [2] regarding luxury brand myths in reflection of Barthes’ approach). Nevertheless, “very few studies have focused on the concept of brand contract […], the discourse directly emitted by the brand, and the relevant methodology to analyse brand extendibility” [27].
Thus, there is a lack of studies investigating semiotics in the context of luxury marketing [28]. Starting from the ground, a differentiation between the trivial and the extraordinary luxury is of core interest in the field of luxury research. Though Vega-Sala/ Roux, et al. [27] and Kessou, et al. [29] did some prior research in this context before, there is much future research necessary.
Regarding the application of semiotics for marketing and management, we generally still have to face a methodological approach that is simplified to research markets, and concepts that are used to deal with simple numbers. Nevertheless, by starting with an approach that offers a broad range of differentiation, semiotics offers the possibility of introducing complex models for understanding the meaning of signs as creators of brand identity. Concerning the complexity of sign construction and its variables, Peirce’s model still may be regarded as the most differentiated and distinctive semiotic approach ever established [30,31]. While earlier semiotic marketing approaches and reflections only pay attention to the fact that signs represent specific meanings of brand, the adaption of Peirce’s classical model in the context of marketing offers the unique classification of what, where, and how signs create our reality. Within this trichotomy of signs that refer to brands in general and luxury in particular, we may observe the construct of how brand management can create values up to a unique and distinctive identity. “Brands are built over time and space. Since the day of their creation, brands shape and develop themselves. Their identity is created through successive communication campaigns year by year” [27].
Conceptualization and Propositions
Especially in the marketing and luxury industries, the signs of a brand identity can face consumers at any time. “The consumer world is a web of meanings among consumer and marketers from signs and symbols ensconced in their cultural space and time” [32]. Against this backdrop, the question arises as to what kind of consumers are confronted with signs, or more specifically, what kind of sign chains they associate with the brand. Based on a compilation of Peirce´s trichotomies, a conceptual framework, which we call the semiotic molecule, will be constituted. Finally, we will derive the propositions for the sign chains of luxury brand myths in terms of the aforementioned concept.
Defining the text: signs as textual phenomena
To determine the signs relating to luxury values, it should be realized that all the signs that are included in such a context can accumulate in a text that can be read. This holistic understanding of a text [33-35] simply relies on the assumption that we communicate with all of our senses. The sum of those signs creating a specific (up to complex) meaning in this way of communication can be defined as the semiotic text that consumers are able to read [36]. This idea can be exemplified by food in supermarkets, which is arranged as a textual sign chain with reference to specific values.
M&S [Marks & Spencer] utilize a style that defines the brand and values of the group, and in order to elevate the definition and significance of their food within the market, they adopt a modern approach to food marketing that utilizes a set of semiotic codes to reinforce and add symbolic value to their products [37].
Therefore, without neglecting other approaches of textual research, semiotic texts can be seen as multisensory complex sign chains, which is an assumption that builds the foundation for new approaches in future research. Concerning our observation and in favor of an easier intuition, only the visual signs will be brought into focus within the semiotic text.
Meaning of brand presentation: The semiotic molecule
The semiotic approach of Charles Peirce offers the possibility to determine signs with a precision of three different perspectives concerning the Representamen, i.e., the relation of the Representamen to the signified object, and the relation between the sign and the Interpretant, i.e., the complexity of the sign for a reader. This trichotomy is divided into three different classes, which are Firstness (possibility), Secondness (existence), and thirdness (law). Representamen (which we will call signs in the following) may be divided into qualisigns, sinsigns, and legisigns, and object relations may be divided into icons (such as a statue or picture), indices (such as smoke referring to fire), or symbols (arbitrary signs). Interpretant relations may be divided into rhemas, dicents, and arguments, which represent the complexity of the meaning of a single word up to complex sign chains and systems [30,31,38]. Theoretically, these three trichotomies would result in 27 combinations (3x3x3), but due to some impossible combinations (a qualisign can only be rhematic and iconic), a total combination of ten main sign classes is possible. Within a semiotic framework, we call these ten possible combinations the semiotic molecule on which our world of signs is based (Figure 1).
The idea of a semiotic molecule of brands is also presented by Rossolatos G [39] and Santos FP [40], who compared a compilation of semiotic classifications with the structure of a molecule. This approach is related with a rather philosophical overview of brand construction rather than with textual brand creation. “Like a Gestalt, the wholeness of the elements and their dependent relationships shape the existence of a brand” [40]. Contrary to that approach, in our concept of a semiotic molecule, the combination of the trichotomies leads to paths in each specific main class. In a rather artistic illustration, the model appears to look indeed like a molecule. The core, representing a sign, is surrounded by the various possibilities, which eventually create specific classes and thus the qualities of signs (Figure 2).
To know more about our Journals....Iris Publishers
No comments:
Post a Comment