Master Business Administration.
Track: Marketing.
Moderating influence of consumer’s emotions on the
relationship between brand persona, social
responsibility and wiliness to buy from the fashion
start-up.
Student: Kseniia Nazarenko (1127031)
Supervisor: dr. Frederik B. I. Situmeang
Abstract
This study explored the purchase intentions and willingness to pay from the independent fashion label without strong brand name. The aim of this study is to determine consumer’s motivation and emotions, while purchasing from unknown fashion brand, or start-up, as well as the response to different promotion strategies. Two strategies will be compared, focus on sustainability and persona behind the brand. The empirical study will be held on small brand of fashion accessories. This study contributes to the literature by combining different
strategies in one study, which can lead to further research on effects of sustainability vs. persona behind the brand on willingness to pay. This topic could be further researched by using other product types and more representative sample.
Statement of Originality
This document is written by Student Kseniia Nazarenko, who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used
in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
Table of contents Abstract
1. Introduction 2. Literature review.
a. Willingness to pay b. Persona behind the brand c. Sustainability
i. Sustainable products
ii. Willingness to pay for sustainable goods. d. Customer personality
i. Motivations to buy premium goods ii. Customers new emotions
e. Conceptual model 3. Research a. Research setting b. Research design. c. Data collection d. The respondents e. Data analysis 4. General Discussion 5. References Appendix 1 - Survey
Introduction:
One of the milestones for the starting enterprise is to establish a name or a brand via finding its target audience, who would become loyal and stay with the company with the course of its development. Big corporations are using all available resources in their marketing campaigns to reach out for the customers, small enterprises on contrary have very limited possibilities, and need to be as specific and focused as possible at their approach. That is why it is important to define what lies behind the motivation of the customer in their wiliness to buy from the starting merchandize. I would like to look into the three levels of motivation behind customer’s wiliness to buy: first is a need to personal need to own highly esthetic products, second – influence of the other person or so called- persona, behind the company, and third one is society or social responsibility.
Studies has shown that we care a lot of what others think of us, but even more we care what are we thinking of ourselves. Although social norms encourage none selfish behavior, self-interest is clearly a powerful motive in markets. This raises two important questions with respect to the economic consequences of none selfish behavior: Is none selfish behavior important in markets, and if so, how does it operate? (Gneezy, Gneezy, Riener, & Nelson, 2012).
Latest trends of building successful independent brands in creative industries are moving from the personal branding and product design towards the sustainability and social
responsibility as a key success factors for the emerging ventures. A little research was done about consumer’s perception of these factors and interplay within such, while choosing unknown brand. What factor is more prevalent in consumer’s motivation, how consumer’s personality moderates the relationship between these three different strategies and its wiliness to buy.
Multiple studies have been done on the consumer’s wiliness to pay or value definition. As value is the maximum amount we are willing to give up, the question is how do we justify
our value definition for the products from the emerging merchandizes, which don’t have established brands, like luxury products, but at the same time cannot compete with mass market products due to the higher prices. The motivation and personality in particular behind these personal choices from the consumer point of view is going to be the focus of my study, with aim to study how the modern individual is acting to differentiate from the mass market and what his focus on reading modern emerging brand.
On the practical side, I hope this study will be interesting for all emerging ventures, start-ups, especially in the creative industries, which are looking for the approach towards their
audience and want to know what are their priorities, and how to connect with them. For the academic society, I hope this study will be interesting as I will put together knowledge of the studies on the separate concepts of the product design, persona and social responsibility together and will test their interplay with each other as well as how consumer personality might moderate relations between these concepts and wiliness to buy.
1. Literature Review.
This part of the thesis provides a comprehensive review of the literature about the key concepts in this study, in order to analyze what has already been studied on this topic, and to find out how to dig deeper into the workings and limits of studies. First, a general
understanding of subliminal priming and previous research about key variables are discussed. Then, the role of motivation and needs and insights about matching priming with classical conditioning are presented. Finally, the identification of a research gap and development of a research question are given.
In my master thesis, I would like to study, what lies behind the motivation of the consumer’s motivation and wiliness to buy from independent emerging fashion brand. Even though there could be many motivations to buy, I will narrow down my criteria of consumer’s preferences to the three dimensions: product design, central person behind the brand and company’s sustainability. I will also look deeper into motivation factors, questioning the respondents what inspire them the most, in this way making the connection between the core personal values and wiliness to pay for the products.
This study could be interesting for the independent emerging brands, who can’t compete based on price with mass market and marketing budgets of the luxury brands, looking for a niche and choosing one of many, and mostly one of three above mentioned dimensions. This study will be based on the consumer look on these three dimensions. In my literature review I will look into studies done on these concepts.
First of all, lets will look at the studies on the motivation of the consumer. Wiliness to pay.
Value, as maximum that we are willing to give up, or wiliness to buy has been best tested under the concept “pay what you want” (PWYW) when customers in sort of small auction are offered to pay their maximum willing to give up value for the offered product or service. Under PWYW, when people like a company, they may pay a price that feels right rather than simply the lowest price possible (Gneezy et al., 2012). What motivates prosocial behavior in markets? The same study of Gneezy at al. (2012) provides evidence that identity and self-image concerns are potentially very important. Importantly, the results indicate that people
are not simply signaling to others. If self-signaling and social signaling were merely additive, then we would expect customers who were being observed to pay more than those who were not, with the difference capturing the value of signaling to others. Choosing whether to purchase a product or service, and how much to pay for it, has a self-signaling value (Gneezy et al., 2012). This could justify our choice for choosing the product from a famous brand, as it connects us to its values, and signals our value to others via our product choice. Independent emerging brands are less known or unknown at all to justify our choice of self-signaling. That’s is why same study of Gneezy at al.(2012) uncovers insight of self image, which could be more appealing to our consumer. Paying in PWYW may signal to others that “I am a moral person.” At the same time, however, such payment also serves as a self-signal. In the self-signaling model, a person is not certain about her true identity due to some form of imperfect recall, and therefore uses her actions to update her beliefs regarding her “true” type.
Another manipulation with model PWYW publicly and anonymously allows us to test the relationship between self-image and social-image considerations. It is plausible to assume that the two forces work in the same direction. Under this assumption, one would expect customers to pay more when they pay the owner than when they pay anonymously. Alternatively, it is possible that being monitored by the owner may crowd out the
self-signaling strength, leaving the individual to believe that she chose to pay the specific amount because she “had to,” not because she is a fair person. Under this account, the transaction carries relatively little self-signaling value, so the customer may end up paying less when monitored by the owner (Gneezy et al., 2012). Concerning my topic, I could justify the choice of our customer as he/she doesn’t want to signal to others about his/her identity by buying from famous brands, but he/she wants to remain faithful to his/her self-image. And we already see how concepts of our study, product design, persona and sustainability, can interplay with each other by supporting each other and contradicting at the same moment. Brand persona.
Building a strong brand is the goal of many organizations. Building a strong brand with significant equity is seen as providing a host of possible benefits to a firm, including greater customer loyalty and less vulnerability to competitive marketing actions and marketing crises, larger margins as well as more favorable customer response to price increases and
decreases, greater trade or intermediary cooperation and support, increased marketing communication effectiveness, and licensing and brand-extension opportunities (Keller, 2001).
“We are what we have”—what we buy, own, and consume define us to others as well as to ourselves. In this context, it is widely recognized that brands have the ability to embody, inform, and communicate desirable consumer identities. Much less is understood, however, about the drivers of consumer-brand identification—what factors cause it, when, and why (Stokburger-Sauer, Ratneshwar, & Sen, 2012).
Researches have focused on how the personality of a brand enables a consumer to express his/her own self, an ideal self, or specific dimensions of the self, through the use of the brand. Practitioners view it as a key way to differentiate a brand of consumer preference and usage and as a common denominator that can be used to market a brand across cultures (Aaker, 1997).
The concept of consumer–brand identification (CBI) is central to our understanding of how, when, and why brands help consumers articulate their identities. (Stokburger-Sauer et al., 2012). In terms of brand image, the question becomes what effects are created by the
communication option, how strongly are they linked to the brand and how do the effects that are created affect, either directly or indirectly, consumers’ propensity to purchase and use brands? (Keller, 2009)
Marketers need to assess which experiences and impressions will have the most influence at each stage of the buying process. This understanding will help them allocate communications dollars more efficiently and design and implement the right communications programs. Armed with these insights, marketers can judge marketing communications according to its ability to affect experiences and impressions, build brand equity and drive brand sales. (Keller, 2009).
In communicating their brands, businesses need to tell a compelling story that connects with its audiences on an emotional level. Every story requires a clearly understood central
character with, which people can identify and create a long-lasting emotional bond: the brand persona. Without a strong brand persona, the brand narrative lacks a focus (Herskovitz & Crystal, 2010). Persona behind the brand could be a leader at the company, charismatic
leader, who possess and has transferred his/her personal values to the brand narratives and associates with the brand. Charisma applies to an individual personality superhuman, and endowed with supernatural, which is considered extraordinary or at least specifically exceptional powers. In more secular environments, referred to as “inspirational
leadership”(Hunt & Ropo, 1993). The first condition is that potential members perceive in the organization, something of profound significance for their lives. (Weierter, 2001),
Persona-focused storytelling is essential to branding. When it comes to creating a powerful brand narrative, the persona – the articulated form of the brand’s character and personality – comes first, and all other elements unfold from there. A compelling brand starts with a strong, well-drawn, and quickly recognized persona – the essential connection between what a company says and what it does (Herskovitz & Crystal, 2010b).
After reflecting on the studies of the brand persona and how it helps customers in their choice of the brand and wiliness to buy, I would like to make another step further from personality to the social aspect and link their decision making to the social responsibility or
sustainability, how it influence their product/brand choice. Social responsibility. Sustainability.
Sustainable products.
Present literature about sustainable goods describes many definitions of the term, it is still unclear what constitutes as sustainable product (Dangelico, Pujari, & Dangelico, 2016). Chen (2001) provides a very short definition declaring basically that sustainable product
development addresses environmental issues through product design and innovation. The environment plays a central role in most of the definitions about sustainable products. Lin and Chang (Lin & Chang, 2012) state in their research about the role of environmental consciousness in green product usage that “compared with regular products, sustainable products tend to use biodegradable, nontoxic ingredients and are packaged in bottles that can be recycled”. In their meaning, they are not only focusing on the content of the product, but on the packaging as well. This suggests that the whole product is sustainable. It is important to note this because if only one component of a product is sustainable, can the whole product than be referred to as a sustainable product? Beside the product itself, it is also important that the production process is sustainable. In this study, the research setting is the fashion
accessory industry. Hence, previous literature about sustainable fashion is reviewed. Before a clear definition of sustainable fashion can be given, it is important to point out that there are different nomenclatures to describe the concept: green fashion, ethical fashion and
sustainable fashion are used interchangeably(Shen, Richards, & Liu, 2013). Then Casadesus-Masanell et al.(Casadesus-Casadesus-Masanell R., Crooke M., Reinhardt F., 2009) define green goods in the fashion industry as “goods that are supposed to have lower adverse environmental
impacts either in production or in use”. This definition achieves to mention the environment as an important stakeholder when producing fashion but fails to mention the fair-trade and ethical components that include the people who make the clothes. Dong, Richards, and Feng (2013, p. 35) provide in addition a much more elaborate definition of sustainable fashion. Stating that sustainable fashion is “clothing that incorporate fair trade principles with sweatshop-free labour conditions; that does not harm the environment or workers by using biodegradable and organic material; that is designed for a longer lifetime use; that is
produced in an ethical production system, perhaps even locally; and which causes little or no environmental impact and makes use of eco-labelled or recycled materials”. This definition mentions both the environment and the people, who make them, therefore this definition of sustainable fashion will be used in this paper.
Willingness to pay for sustainable goods.
How much are consumers of sustainable goods willing to pay to signal their environmental consciousness? How much are consumers willing to pay to satisfy other behavioral demand motives for sustainable products? A large amount of environmental economic and social research in recent years has revolved around substantial anecdotal evidence that consumption of environmental public goods is driven, at least in part, by behavioral motives. Theoretical explanations for growing demand for environmentally friendly products typically include the now classic models of altruism and impure altruism, as well as alternative behavioral
hypotheses that include guilt. In the case of highly visible environmentally friendly products, such as hybrid cars or solar panels, researchers have recently begun to explore social status signaling as an important demand driver (Delgado, Harriger, & Khanna, 2015). This study confirms that social responsibility becomes more of a status signaling, and I would like to test how it corresponds with consumer emotions and internal values and influence his wiliness to buy.
On the other hand, previous studies have shown that, even when consumers are
consumption, their level of engagement in sustainable apparel purchasing behaviors is low. Furthermore, normative social influence was not an adequate motivator to increase
consumption of sustainable apparel (Connell & Kozar, 2012).
Consumer personality
Consumer motivations to buy premium products.
Aesthetics has been identified as a fundamental personal value from the very beginning of personality research (Townsend & Sood, 2012). Among the universal values, aesthetics has a special relevance to consumer behavior in three ways: aesthetics is innately appreciated (Langlois, Ritter, Roggman, & Vaughn, 1991) has evolutionary benefits and is applicable in a product context. First, research on person perception and the so-called beauty premium suggests the preference for beauty is intrinsic. (Townsend & Sood, 2012)
The literature highlighting the motivations behind buying behavior in the premium industry tends to focus on two main tendencies lying in the presumable consumer reasoning. Firstly, the reasons of engaging in the premium good purchase are highly consumer-centered and even referred to as the hedonic consumption reasoning (Dubois, B., Duquesne, 1993). Many consumers in premium sector purchase goods primarily for the symbolic meanings the brand holds, which are used for the individual to create the self-image and communicate the
excellence and distinction through the brand (Husic & Cicic, 2009). Since the consumers hold high solvency and purchasing power, the luxury goods are appreciated by the target audience for the symbolic value they bring (Dubois & Duquesne, 1993). The act of luxury piece purchase could be perceived as indicating an extreme form of expressing the values of the buyers and helping them to form the image of the excellence seeker or the exclusive distinction appreciator. Hence, if the premium brand is communicating sustainability, it is perceived as one of the symbolic meanings the brand holds. Second group of reasons influencing premium-buying behavior are focusing on the tangible product qualities rather than the perceived attributes. As stated by Dubois and Duquesne (1993), luxury buyers are driven by the product quality, aesthetic design and the excellence of service. Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry emphasizes the importance of building the excellent consumer experience in the flagship stores and on the online shops, since it is the crucial moment when the person decides to build the individual image and reputation by using your brand and your
items. Luxury brands were always perceived to be of the premium quality, offering unique pieces and communicating rarity. Needless to say, that these motivations are usually
intertwined and emerge in the moment of purchase to convince the individual on buying the piece. Additionally, they are equally and immensely important to consider whenever forming consumer expectations for the luxury goods. Moreover, involvement or the level of campaign relevance is considered to be specific kind of motivation, which plays crucially important role on purchase intentions (Vermeir & Verbeke, 2006).
Customers new emotions
At the most basic level, any company can begin a structured process of learning about its customers’ emotional motivators and conducting experiments to leverage them, later scaling up from there. At the other end of the spectrum, firms can invest in deep research and big data analytics or engage consultancies with specific expertise. Companies in financial services, retail, health care, and technology are now using a detailed understanding of emotional connection to attract and retain the most valuable customers. The most
sophisticated firms are making emotional connection part of a broad strategy that involves every function in the value chain, from product development and marketing to sales and service (Zorfas & Leemon, 2015).
H1a- Visible persona behind the brand has positive influence on the consumer wiliness to pay.
H1b- Importance of knowing the personality of persona increases the connection with the brand and therefore willing to buy from the brand
H1c- Self-reflection with presented by brand persona and personality leads to stronger connection with the brand and wiliness to pay for it’s products.
H2a- Sustainability of the brand has a positive influence on the consumer wiliness to pay from the brand
H2b- Personal importance of the consumer increases the relation between brand and consumer and his wiliness to pay.
3. Research
Research setting.
The empirical setting of this study is a Dutch fashion accessory brand called Nizzo
(bynizzo.com). This brand is specialized in a handmade leather goods, producing bags and accessories for every day and long lasting use, using local and natural materials
(leather/cotton), insuring that not only bag is produced locally in a sustainable and socially responsible way, but materials (leather) used is made in the same way.
The line of bags corresponds with busy life style and don’t meant to chase latest fashion trends, but to have time-less look, and while made from durable material, as natural leather, it will prevent the customer purchasing multiple bags from synthetic materials, which last shorter, and pollute the environment much more during the production and after, if not recycled. During the production of leather goods, a lot of water and chemicals is used. Beside this, leather goods are often produced in countries with low labour costs (e.g. China and Bangladesh). As a result, the retail prices for leather goods vary a lot. All these facts about leather goods make it an interesting product to determine the WTP.
Research design.
The research question seeks to investigate the relationship between personality of the customer and the interplay of three constructs on consumer’s wiliness to buy on the
independent brand. Therefore, an analysis will be conducted on how each factor affects consumer’s perception of the brand, corresponds with consumer’s personality and its consumer-brand relations.
Multiple hypothesis will be created to test how product design, persona and social
responsibility interplay with each other and influence consumer’s wiliness to buy. Hypothesis will also to test how the consumer’s personality moderates the relationship between these factors and consumer’s wiliness to buy. To collect the data, a survey will be presented to the customers of the multiple independent emerging brands.
Data collection.
Quantitative research will be carried out using a survey design, and it is useful for using statistics to test hypotheses and generalize the findings. One questionnaire will be designed to ask respondents about their personality traits and preferences while choosing for a new product from a start-up. The questionnaire will be distributed online by the use of
questionnaire system Qualtrics. Questionnaire will be send out to the clients of the few start-ups, and to the network of the researcher.
Survey will contain four different scenarios, to test how the willingness to pay correspond with product, when different information about it presented.
First scenario, will include only product description, question about design and indication how much participant is willing to pay for it.
Second scenario will have additionally information about the personality behind the brand and will ask if this information important and if respondent can reflect to presented
information, followed by the design and WTP question.
Third scenario will include information about sustainability of the organization and in particular will include the information about animal welfare, during the material production of the presented product, followed by the questions about design and WTP.
Forth scenario will include both sections about persona behind the brand and sustainability, ending the survey with the same questions about design and willingness to pay.
The questionnaire will ask respondents for their demographics such as their gender (nominal variables), age and educational level (ratio variables). For the other constructs existing and validated Likert scales will be used on a 7-point scale (completely disagree – completely
agree) at interval level. What inspires the customers in their daily life, multiple answers will be presented based on the article “The new science of customer emotions” by (Zorfas & Leemon, 2015), participants should choose three most relevant to them options.
Respondents
The survey took 106 respondents, among which first three answers (age, education, state) were recorded only for 79 people: 65 (82%) females and 14 (18%) males. Age range in the sample was split to the age groups and the biggest group is ‘25-35’ – 30 people (38%), second one ‘35-45’- 22 people (27%), then goes ‘18-25’ -14 people (18%), ‘45-55’- 12 people (15%), “55+”- 8 people (8%). (Table 1)
Taking into consideration that majority, who took the survey, is female (82%), this sample we can consider representative for this research, because women are generally more aware of fashion brands and trends than men and are likely more motivated to answer a survey about novel types of branding (Wu & Chalip, 2013).
Table 1. Age
Majority of the respondents have level of education above basic (high school) education: Master diploma holders – 34 people (43%), Bachelor diploma- 27 people (34%), PhD- 10 people (12%), and 8- High school. Most participants in the sample were highly educated (89%). This result is skewed because in the total Dutch population most people are educated at a vocational level (40.1%). This difference between the sample and the general population can be explained by the fact that most participants were recruited within the client base of the similar companies. (Table 2.)
Data analysis
This section provides an overview of the tests that were used to analyze the data.
First question about the customer inspiration moments included 8 questions and participants had to choose 3 most relevant emotions to them.
The most important emotion among the 79 recorded answers among respondents, based on Zorfas & Leemon (2015) classification containing of 8 major emotions, is “Be the person I want to be” – 42 people, second is “Feel a sense of freedom”- 33 respondents, third is
“Enjoy the sense of well-being”- 28, forth is “Protect the environment”- 25 people, 24 people find the emotion of “Standing out of the crowd”- important for their life guidance and 23 “Have confidence in future. Equal number of 20 people feel inspired by “Succeeding in life” and “Feel secure”. “Feeling of belonging” find important only 14, and “Feel a sense of thrill” only 10. (Table 3.)
Product design:
First scenario of the questionnaire included questions only about the product design here are the results:
This bag looks comfortable to wear- 48%- Mostly agree, 38- Entirely agree, (mean 5,52) This bag looks elegant and stylish- 25% Mostly agree, 55%- Entirely agree, (mean 5,62) This bag looks durable- 30% Mostly agree, 50%- Entirely agree. (mean 5,67) (graph 1) Graph 1.
Persona behind the brand and product design scenario.
Analyzing second scenario of the survey, which contained 8 questions about the persona behind the brand we can see the following statistics:
1. It is important for me to know, who is behind the brand 45% - mostly agree, 30% - Entirely Agree. (5,45 out of 7)
2. The personality of the person, who designed a product affect my purchasing decision. (5,19 out of 7)
3. The personality of the person, who represent the product, have influence on my purchasing decision. (5,1 out of 7)
4. People, who wear/use the product, have influence on my purchasing decision (5,05 out of 7)
5. The personality of the person, who recommend a product affect my purchasing decision (4,6 out of 7)
6. I’m able to associate myself with the person described in the product description (5,32 out of 7)
7. I consider my personality similar to the person described in the product description (5,35 out of 7)
8. It is important for me to have something in common with people, who wear/ use the product (4,95 out of 7)
General analysis of this set of questions tell us that the respondents find it important to know, who is behind the brand, the personality of the person, who design a product affect their purchasing decision and they are able to associate with the represented person in the description. (Graph 2)
In this scenario, the question about design was included and it shows in following graph ( graph 3):
Graph 3.
Respondents found product comfortable (5,8 out of 7), durable (5,9 out of 7) as well as elegant and stylish (5,65 out of 7).
To test the relationship between persona behind the brand and willingness to pay and following hypotheses will be tested.
H1a- Visible persona behind the brand has positive influence on the consumer wiliness to pay.
H1b- Importance of knowing the personality of persona increases the connection with the brand and therefore willing to buy from the brand
H1c- Self-reflection with presented by brand persona and personality leads to stronger connection with the brand and wiliness to pay for it’s products.
To test these hypotheses, we ran an ANOVA test in SPSS program. 8 questions about the persona behind the brand and 3 questions about design of the bag of the second scenario are independent variables and price that the respondents are willing to pay is dependent variable. The results show us that only for the question 7 (p7- 0,28 <0,05) there is a statistical
significance and we can conclude that people are “consider their personality similar to the person described in the product description” are willing to pay for the presented product the highest price. With this result we can conclude that hypothesis H1c is confirmed for the
particular product, while other data confirm importance of the statements of the hypotheses H1a and H1b statistically were not proven for the presented product.
(Table 5).
Table 5.
Third scenario, which included the questions about sustainability and product design, contained 8 question about the importance of information about position of the company towards sustainability and welfare of the animals, which is considered while
outsourcing the materials used for the production, followed by the questions about design and willingness to pay.
Following graph indicates the answers about sustainability: Graph 5.
Making a general conclusion, respondents found important to know the source of the materials, and this information influences their decision to buy.
2. The source of the materials, used to make a product, influence my purchasing decision – (mean 4,94)
3. The logo shown above signify that the product is produced from sustainable materials- (mean 4,53)
4. The certifications shown assure me that the product is produced in a sustainable way- (mean 4,83)
5. The certifications shown assure me that the product is produced in a responsible way- (mean 4,83)
6. The product shown does not harm animal welfare- (mean 4,89)
7. The information provided make me believe that product is made in sustainable way – (mean 4,89)
8. I am able to see descriptions about sustainable certifications in the description above – (mean 4,33)
At the same time the high number of answers “Neither Agree not Disagree” on questions number 3 (The logo shown above signify that the product is produced from sustainable materials), can lead us to conclusion, that respondents were are not aware of particular certification. (graph 6)
Graph 6.
Respondents found product comfortable (mean 5,28), durable (mean 5,33) as well as elegant and stylish (mean 5,33).
To test following hypophyses: H2a- Sustainability of the brand has a positive influence on the consumer wiliness to pay from the brand and H2b- Personal importance of the consumer increases the relation between brand and consumer and his wiliness to pay, we ran ANOVA analysis in the SPSS program (table 4). Where sustainability and design questions were independent variables and price of the product- dependent variable. Results has shown statistical significance only for question d2 (0,13< 0,05) and tell us that people were willing to pay the highest price only for “Stylish and elegant” product, and other statements about sustainability and design didn’t influence their willingness to pay.
Table 6.
Forth scenario included questions of the both blocks about persona and sustainability, here are the results of the Persona block(graph 7):
Graph 7.
1. It is important for me to know, who is behind the brand (mean 5,82)
2. The personality of the person, who design a product affect my purchasing decision (mean 5,29)
3. The personality of the person, who represent a product affect my purchasing decision (mean 5,47)
4. People, who wear/use the product, have influence on my purchasing decision (mean 5)
decision (mean 4,47)
6. I am able to associate myself with the person described in the product description above (mean 5,65)
7. I consider my personality similar to the person described in the product description above (mean 5,18)
8. It is important for me to have something in common with people, who wear/use a product (mean 4)
We can see the same results as in the second block that respondents find it important to know, who is behind the brand, the personality of the person, who design a product affect their purchasing decision and they are able to associate themselves with the represented person in the description.
Sustainability:
Information about sustainability has also impact on their purchasing decision, but they were not entirely convinced about presented logos or certification, showing the protection of the animal rights. From this we can conclude in the presented scenario, that the importance of the welfare of the animals are less important for the consumer, then personality behind the brand as means are slightly lower than in the Persona scenario.
Graph 8.
1. It is important for me to know, the source of the materials (mean 5,82)
2. The source of the materials, used to make a product, influence my purchasing decision (mean 5,88)
3. The logo shown above signify that the product is produced from sustainable materials (mean 5,71)
4. The certifications shown assure me that the product is produced in a sustainable way (mean 5,59)
(mean 5,94)
6. The product shown does not harm animal welfare (mean 5,29)
7. The information provided make me believe that product is made in sustainable way (mean 5,82)
8. I am able to see descriptions about sustainable certifications in the description above (mean 5,24)
General discussion.
Summary of main contributions
Summarizing the findings, we can conclude that people find it important to know, what kind of personality is presented behind the brand and if they can relate to it, it has even more impact on their willingness to pay for the products of this brand. Information about
sustainability customers find also important, but this information should be convincing and clear to the customer. Looking at the table 7 (where means in different scenarios are presented) we can see that the full information about the persona behind the brand and sustainability has greater impact on customer judgements about the product characteristics. Information about only persona behind the brand has also bigger impact on their judgements, and even only product description lead to higher evaluation of the product itself, while when information about the sustainability was presented it led to the least favorable evaluation. Table. 7
Combining our findings with the customer emotions, we can conclude that for the premium fashion goods, customers find important to reflect their personalities towards the persona
Product
(mean) Persona+ Product (mean) Sustainability +Product (mean) Sustainability +Persona +Product (mean) This bag looks comfortable to wear 5,52 5,8 5,28 6,12 This bag looks elegant and stylish 5,67 5,65 5,33 6,29 This bag looks durable 5,67 5,9 5,33 6,41
behind the brand and relate to them, which increases their brand involvement and willingness to pay for the products. And even thought the emotion to “Protect the environment” was number 4 by the importance among all emotions, this emotion didn’t lead to higher evaluation of the particular product, maybe it can be explained by the fact that the leather material could not be 100% sustainable, as still connected to the animal use, and more information should be presented on the product description about it to be more convincing. But in combination with persona description it definitely improves customer’s company evaluations.
Further research investigating other transparency aspects of the company’s activities could be conducted in the following studies, as the impact of openness definitely influences
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