This Brand Saved My Life! A Phenomenological Approach to Brand

ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802

This Brand Saved My Life! a Phenomenological Approach to Brand Fanatics’ Lives bernard cova, euromed management marseille france gregorio fuschillo, euromed management marseille france Fanaticism is a growing consumption phenomenon. It is commonly defined as a detrimental and destructive phenomenon in consumer research. This paper shows the existence of the constructive side of fanatical consumption. It highlights how consumer lives have been ‘saved’ thanks to the brand itself.

[to cite]: bernard cova and gregorio fuschillo (2013) ,"This Brand Saved My Life! a Phenomenological Approach to Brand Fanatics’ Lives", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 10, eds. Gert Cornelissen, Elena Reutskaja, and Ana Valenzuela, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 212-213. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1013948/volumes/v10e/E-10 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.

This Brand Saved My Life! A Phenomenological Approach to Brand Fanatics’ Lives Bernard Cova, Euromed Management Marseille France* Gregorio Fuschillo, Euromed Management Marseille France*

EXTENDED ABSTRACT

In consumer research, studies on fanaticism/fanatics have gone through three distinct phases of development. A first phase of introduction or exploration in the late 1980’s is characterized by the appearance of the phenomenon. Holbrook (1987) and Lehmann (1987) were the first to explore the topic through an introspective analysis – the first one an avid consumer of jazz music, the other devoted to extended weightlifting. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s a whole school of study (known as studies on market cultures; Arnould and Thompson, 2005), grew. This area of study focuses on the analysis of social formations generally known as subcultures of consumption, brand communities and consumer tribes and on the practices developed among the members (Cova et al., 2007). During this period, fanaticism remained in the background, silently binding to the various cultures of consumption, without rising as a central theme. The widespread presence of hard-core fans in these studies is proof that such a link exists. This is the incubation or latency stage, where fanaticism is enriched with additional elements - the collective dimension (or fandom), identity and social discrimination. During the 2000’s, a whole series of studies were undertaken which aimed at putting the issue of fanaticism as a central theme in the debate on consumption. In this phase, which we call the statement phase, the attention of researchers is focused on the definition of fanaticism/fanatics and their characteristics (Chung et al., 2008; Redden and Steiner, 2000; Smith et al., 2007; Thorne and Bruner, 2006). However, these contributions fail in providing the uniqueness of the phenomenon of brand fanaticism. They do not clearly distinguish fanaticism from other relational concepts which share strong resemblance with it i.e. love, loyalty, and devotion. Consequently, an important void is left in our understanding of the relational characteristics of fanaticism and it differs from other seemingly related concepts. Our research is conducted in a naturalistic setting (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) through participant observation. The collection of life stories can be considered the most appropriate approach to the indepth understanding of the life experiences of consumers as they have influenced who consumers are today (Atkinson, 1998). In our work, life stories are collected in the form of phenomenological interviews (Thompson et al., 1989). Phenomenological interviews lead informants through their experiences with a specific brand throughout their lifetime since their first contact with the brand. Connecting those experiences enable the emergence of a set of thematic patterns providing the overall context of the consumer’s life-world. “The goal of phenomenological investigation is to describe experience in lived rather than conceptually abstract terms” (Thompson et al., 1989, p. 140). In addition, we held an outside view interviewing significant others in order to collect data on the relevant micro-social environment of our main informants. Photo-elicitation (Schroeder, 2006) has been an additional technique through which we try to enrich our data collection. It has been conducted with informants, sometimes together with their significant others, using personal book pictures in which the object/brand plays an important role. The data collection has been conducted over the last 9 months and it is still ongoing. For the data analysis we use the hermeneutic approach (Thompson, 1997). We approach and present our five persons/cases adopting the case study format (Thompson et al., 1990). Our field of research is composed of five persons/cases who have been developing an exclusive relationship with a specific brand

during a large part of their life. The brands concerned are: Apple, Vespa, Playmobil, Nirvana, and Walt Disney. Because of the social stigma affecting the word ‘fanatic’, it is difficult to access people. The five persons/cases mentioned above have been identified and selected thanks to their significant others who have recognized those people as more than simple fans, even fanatics. Furthermore, all the persons/cases are ready to define themselves as more than fans but they are not comfortable at all – except Amy (Walt Disney) – with the fanatic label. Previous research agrees with the idea that fanaticism in consumption is a detrimental phenomenon for consumers and that fanatics are dysfunctional consumers. Thorne and Bruner (2006) associate fanatics with obsessive and compulsive behavior, “the literature in the field has generally focused on behavior as it express itself through obsessive or compulsive activities, actions that are viewed here as characteristic of only a subset of fans (latter referred to as the dysfunctional fan)” (p. 52). Redden and Steiner (2000, p. 330) define consumer fanatics as “destructive and often deadly instincts that create a pathological disjunction among fanatics’ state of mind, their behavior and their goals. Their thinking, behavior and goals not only not support each other, but also sometimes actively work against each other illogically and counterproductively (destructively)”. Chung et al. (2009) go further in that direction exploring the “dark side” of consumer fanaticism. On the contrary, our first findings show the bright side of consumer fanaticism. One of the most recurrent themes is “to save one’s life”. Here, fanaticism for a brand is lived by consumers as the way through which their own life has been “saved” thanks to the brand. Contrary to the common idea surrounding fanaticism and its detrimental effects, data from the field highlights the constructive power for the fanatic consumer. For example, Olivier states that “Playmobil saved my life”: He started his passion when he was a child. He is used to say ‘Playmobil was born in ’74, me in ’76, we can say we are born together’. He was a marginalized little boy during his childhood, Playmobil was his magic, ideal, perfect world ‘where everyone was happy’. Once he is adult he gets his chance, his passion for Playmobil is expensive and he needs money to buy new toys. Thanks to his partner he starts a little company – Kiklobil (from “Kliki” the ancient name of the Playmobil toys) – in which Olivier buys old Playmobil toys, restoring and selling them. The business is an economic and media success. That’s Olivier’s revenge. Another example is Robert who states that “Vespa saved me”: he started his passion when he was a child thanks to his uncle who died in a young age and left his Vespa to Robert as a legacy. He is used to say “I was born, I was baptized in Vespa water”. In the adulthood, after an accident, he had to entirely reorganize his life and he did it with Vespa. In his opinion Vespa “is therapeutic for both the body and the mind”.

REFERENCES

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