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The purpose of this study is to explore the use of expletives and derogatory terminology in the naming structure for companies, products and brands; a marketing strategy which is growing across a wide range of industries. The author defines this concept as brand vulgarity and explores the practice, as it situates in the midst of irony, as terms commonly held as taboo and societally indecent, are moving into the mainstream.

This study draws on the established literature in branding, profanity and ironic marketing to create a conceptual framework through which to understand brand vulgarity.

Brand vulgarity is intended to capture attention. However, several factors influence consumer receptivity and acceptance. These factors include perceived offensiveness exposure and the reclaiming and reappropriation of vulgar terms. Brand vulgarity not only challenges traditional approaches to nomenclature in branding but the building of brand image as well.

The marketplace has become a brand war demarcated by fierce competition each entity vying for attention. The use of vulgar terminology and the growing ease of consumer receptivity calls to question changes in sociocultural sensitivity and its influence on social acceptance of brand vulgarity.

This work breaks new ground as the first to introduce the concept of brand vulgarity and examine the practice across multiple industries.

Managers prefer semantic imbeds in brand names, but extant literature has primarily studied fictitious names for their sound-symbolic perceptions. This paper aims to explore sound-symbolic perceptions of products with blended brand names (BBNs), formed with at least one semantic and one nonsemantic component. Unlike most extant literature, this study not only estimates the effect of vowels and consonants individually on product perceptions but also of their combinations. The boundary condition for this effect is examined by classifying products by their categorization and attributes by their abstractness.

Through a within-subject experiment, this paper tested perceptions of products with BBNs having high-/low-frequency sounds. A mixed-design experiment followed with sound frequency, product-level categorization and attributes’ abstractness as predictor variables.

For BBNs, vowel sounds convey brand meaning better than the combinations of vowel and consonant sounds – and these convey brand meaning better than consonant sounds. Differences in consumers’ perceptions of products with BBNs occur when the degree of attributes’ abstractness matches product-level categorization, such as when concrete attributes match subordinate-level categorization.

Brand managers/strategists can communicate product positioning (attribute-based) through BBNs created specifically for product categories and product types.

This research presents a comparative analysis across vowels, consonants and their combinations on consumers’ perceptions of products with BBNs. Manipulation of names’ length and position of the sound-symbolic imbed in the BBN proffered additional contributions. Another novelty is the interaction effect of product categorization levels and attributes’ abstractness on sound-symbolic perception.

Fashion advertising as a contemporary ideological form has the power to deliver semiotic messages, which frames individuals' perception. Promoting perfection in consumer culture has resulted in the creation of unrealistic self-image and negative effects that led to psychological illnesses and pathological behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ideology behind the contemporary fashion advertising that embraces imperfection and is linked to consumer subjective well-being.

Nine fashion ads were selected based on the WGSN consumer report Embracing Imperfection. A sample of images was analysed applying semiotic analysis combined with the criteria of content analysis.

The results supported the notion that some contemporary fashion communication brands are challenging the conventional idea of perfection. Five themes were identified as the characteristics that bridged the visual surface of advertising with its hidden ideologies of imperfection. By supporting “anonymity”, fashion brand communication is against excessive self-focus and helps reducing anxiety due to being imperfect. By promoting “rawness”, it encourages authenticity and uniqueness. “Banality” rejects materialism and promotes the beauty of the boring day. “Ugliness” advocates for removal of the single standards and celebrate individual differences, and “spontaneity” is interchangeable for humanity, freedom, openness and acceptance of self.

This study is among the few attempts to conduct semiotic analysis of fashion advertising images aiming to identify the visual components and ideologies that could potentially be linked to subjective well-being in fashion communication.

Simon Cowell, the impresario behind The X Factor, a popular television talent show, has often been compared to P.T. Barnum, the legendary nineteenth century showman. This paper aims to examine the alleged parallels in detail and attempts to assess this “Barnum reborn” argument.

Putative parallels between the impresarios are considered under the aegis of two long‐standing, if contentious, historical “theories”: time's cycle and the great man thesis.

Seven broad similarities between the showmen are identified: vulgarity, hyperbole, rivalry, publicity, duplicity, liminality and history. In each case, the arguments pro and con are explored, as is humanity's propensity to personify.

In accordance with the iconic literary critic Harold Bloom, who “strikes texts together to seek if they spark”, this paper strikes two celebrated showmen together to generate historical sparks.

Purpose – The purpose of our study was to better understand how bloggers organize branded storytelling in fashion and luxury blogs using explicit and implicit self-brand association.

Methodology/approach – We have carried out a Netnography on a sample of 60 fashion and luxury blogs. Data analysis relied on a visual denotational and connotational analysis. We have also conducted hermeneutic interviews of influential fashion bloggers and readers to validate our findings.

Findings – Bloggers differently combine explicit and implicit textual and visual branded stimuli depending on their character types. The most influential blogs combine textual implicitness and visual explicitness, regardless of their character types. Other influential bloggers combine visual and textual elements of the story more or less explicitly depending on the archetypes they have constructed. Bloggers reintermediate the relationship between brands and consumers and serve as a “lens” through which readers may select a brand and decide on purchase. The quality of the relationship between the bloggers and the readers relies on the initial reading contract, the evolving presence of the advertised brands in the blog's content, and the amount of privacy shared by the bloggers with their audience.

Research limitations/implications – Our sample is very limited and includes very influential and professionalized blogs.

Practical implications – Our study should help brand managers in selecting fashion blogs as a new relay for advertisement or sponsored content.

Originality/value of paper – Our study provides a framework to brand managers by highlighting recognizable storytelling patterns.

Global product-harm crises increased in recent years. After such crises, firms' product-recall policies varied across countries, which might cause consumers in some countries to feel unfairly treated. Drawing on the relative deprivation theory, this study aims to examine how perceived unfairness of local consumers alters their attitudes toward unfairness-enacting foreign brands and competing domestic brands.

This framework was tested by a netnography study on two product recalls from Samsung along with a consumer survey. While this netnography study provided preliminary support to the framework, survey data collected from 501 Samsung consumers after the Galaxy Note 7 crisis validated the theoretical model again.

Perceived unfairness increases local consumers' avoidance of involved foreign brands and their intention to purchase domestic brands through evoking anger toward the foreign brands. Moreover, the detrimental impact of perceived unfairness is found to be stronger when consumers' prior relationship quality is high.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that investigates unfair product recalls across countries and aims to provide important insights into how consumers react to the unfair treatment of foreign brands in a global product-harm context. This study contributes to the product-harm crisis literature and provides important implications for global product-harm crisis management strategies.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: to provide an overview of the literature defining “luxury”; to suggest that luxury goods be distinguished from other goods through the presence of critical success factors (CSF) and to identify different dimensions of luxury; and to introduce a new classification framework to analyse luxury consumers profiles and to explain the personal perception of luxury.

The first part of the paper is a critical discussion of the literature around the concept of luxury; the second part shows the application of an original classification framework, validated through a number of focus groups carried out with participants of Masters and executive training courses.

The concept of luxury is a multifaceted one. A comprehensive approach to classify luxury consumers is used first of all to reveal different customer profiles, and also to prove that the tangible/intangible and personal/social distinctions are relevant for understanding the motivations underlying the purchase of a luxury product.

The model has been validated using four “archetypal” luxury goods (a bag, a bracelet, and so on). Nonetheless, the range of possible luxury goods and the set of possible consumer ' s motives behind luxury spend are so wide that a much more extended testing is required.

The newly proposed model would allow a luxury company to better assess their target market and their current customers, while scholars and analysts might find it useful to define the scope of the luxury market when estimating market figures.

Properly conceived, conducted and interpreted, motivation research can be an extremely powerful management tool, designed to help the manufacturer or advertiser to sell more goods. Its aim is to expose the market situation, explain it and suggest courses of action which will lead to desired changes. It is a way of looking at a problem rather than a collection of specialist techniques and is strictly practical. Hence it can be used alongside other market research tools for the solution of marketing problems and can be applied to a wide range of business activities. Much of its development has been in the advertising field but it can also help in the formulation of production policy, solving packaging problems and marketing operations. It is examined here in all these contexts. The idea of motivation research, the reasons for its use and the techniques by which to apply it are discussed, as well as the pitfalls that are likely to occur. New and imaginary case studies are used throughout to illustrate points. A review of the subject literature is included.

What happens when an ad parody is created with subtle, professional changes to text and imagery, making it almost indistinguishable from the original corporate brand ad? This paper labels this limiting condition of ad parodies as hijacked advertising. Can viewers of such ads recognize whether the ad is hijacked or not? Also, what are the effects of using the dimensions of disparaging humor and offensiveness, commonly used in hijacked ads, on attitudes toward the brands in these ads and a propensity to engage in negative word-of-mouth (WOM) behavior? Results show that ad hijacking recognition moderates the effect of disparaging humor and offensiveness dimensions in hijacked ads on the dependent variables, with adverse attitudes toward the brand and increased intentions to engage in negative WOM behavior only when consumers can recognize that a hijacked ad is indeed hijacked. Further, the moderating effect of ad hijacking recognition on the dependent variables is attributable only to the dimension of offensiveness but not to disparaging humor. Finally, results show that attitudes toward the brand in the hijacked ads completely mediate the effect of offensiveness and the recognition that an ad is hijacked on intentions to engage in negative WOM behavior.

This paper investigates these questions through an empirical examination using an original corporate brand ad, a hijacked version of the original ad using a disparaging humor dimension and another hijacked version of the original ad using the offensiveness dimension.

Results show that ad hijacking recognition moderates the effect of disparaging humor and offensiveness dimensions in hijacked ads on the dependent variables, with adverse attitudes toward the brand and increased intentions to engage in negative WOM behavior only when consumers can recognize that a hijacked ad is indeed hijacked. Further, the moderating effect of ad hijacking recognition on the dependent variables was attributable only to the dimension of offensiveness but not to disparaging humor. Finally, results show that attitudes toward the brand in the hijacked ads completely mediates the effect of the recognition that an ad is hijacked and the dimension of offensiveness on intentions to engage in negative WOM behavior. The result, that a fairly high percentage of respondents attribute the original corporate brand as the source of the hijacked ads, points to a potentially damaging and out-of-control threat to marketers.

Through an empirical study, converging results around the effects of hijacking ads with disparaging humor and offensive dimensions on consumers’ attitudes toward the advertised brand and a propensity to engage in negative WOM behavior were gathered.