Nowadays the diversity in contextual society has offered customers plenty of options during consumption, further impacting their demands and emphasis in reference to corporate brands. For illustrating the way to formulate authenticity, two ways of different perceptions for customers distinguishing authenticity should be taken into concern: modern and postmodern perception. The modern perception, according to Pedersen (2013), refers to customer’s tendency of external objectivity in authenticity based on external excellence such as natural, ethical, honest and sustainable features of objects (brands), while the postmodern one constructing authenticity based on internal subjectivity of individuals, including emotion, culture and personality (p. 2).
Hence, in order to create customers’ loyalty and the demand for brand authenticity, companies need to know their preferences and related resulting factors; marketers must gain an understanding of how to create brand authenticity in respectively modern and postmodern perception (Pedersen, 2013, p. 2). For modern perception, it is sender oriented that does not admit the consumers’ as being active participants of constructing brand authenticity (Pedersen, 2013, p. 11). The only source for customers perceiving authenticity solely comes from external qualities of brands in rational thinking process. With further distinction, products highly paying attention to the heritage and utility comprised within a brand mostly belong to fall in this perception category, such as fine wine or fine water. In contrast, the postmodern perception deems a brand as simply not a lifeless brand but an animated entity with characteristics. Customers start forming a holistic perspective that perceives the creation of meaning in a brand as something subjective and created on foundation of emotional values (Pederson, 2013, p. 19).
Figure 1.1 Modern Perception V.S. Postmodern Perception
In 2013, Coca-cola company, as an instance for postmodern perception, launched a commercial campaign with the slogan: “If crazy is being nice to strangers- Then call me crazy- Have five everyone.” In this message this company has transformed their core value into conveying a sense of emotional advocacy for happiness, which is easy to be understood; most significantly, the very advertising is no longer product-focused but tangible in norm and interpretation absorbed by customers. Provided by the example of promodern strategy above, Coca-cola has adjusted marketing leverage to construct customers’ positive affirmation and familiarity in their brand, thereby formulating the authenticity. It is a highly contextual process in which customers are vigorously co-constructers all along.
Gilmore and Pine (2007) once implied the transitional change from modern tendency to postmodern tendency, namely meaning customers today live in a world that is becoming increasingly staged but also increasingly unreal, thus customers choosing to buy or not buy is dependent on how real they perceive an offering to be (p. 1). The decisive reason causing such change lies in the growing existence of social process or, to be more specific, social constructivism. It indicates that customers' are getting used to incorporating knowledge and culture into making contact with brands; the authenticity determined by individuals has a lot to do with people’s interaction in the course of daily social life, which has challenged the viewpoint of unbiased objectivity during consumption in the past era. The marketers should value the nature of social constructivism to obtain further knowhow about constructing real brand authenticity rather than always bragging the brands’ excellence via those overused mass media channels.
Briefly speaking, in the future, the corporates and marketers seem obligatory to think of customers neither modern or postmodern type, but instead think of understanding what the customers want for their best in the relationship with corporates as “purchasing partners” during consumption (Pedersen, 2013, p. 28). In other words, the effectiveness to render authenticity realistically depends on what the customers buy from the company and how they view the merchandise in mindset.
*Modern perception
*Postmodern perception
Gilmore, J.H., & Pine II J. B. (2007). Authenticity: What consumers really want. Boston, USA: Harvard Business School
Pedersen, T. (2013, December). Brand Authenticity in modern and postmodern consumption. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://pure.au.dk/portal/files/69756266/Brand_Authenticity_f_rdig.pdf
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