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The impact of Massclusivity campaigns on perceptions and brand love
of Gucci online brand communities’ members
Ricardo Godinho Bilro
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL);
Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL);
Lisbon, Portugal
Joana Fonseca dos Santos
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)
Cite as:
Bilro Ricardo Godinho, Loureiro Sandra Maria Correia, dos Santos Joana Fonseca
(2019), The impact of Massclusivity campaigns on perceptions and brand love of
Gucci online brand communities’ members. Proceedings of the European Marketing
Academy , 48th, (8111)
The impact of Massclusivity campaigns on perceptions and brand love of
Gucci online brand communities’ members
Abstract:
The current research aims to understand the impact of Massclusivity (massive and exclusive)
campaigns on the brand love through online brand communities (OBC) interactions. Authors
designed a netnography research with the purpose of analysing the interactions between a
brand - the luxury fashion brand Gucci – and its online brand community on Facebook, during
a specific period of time defined according to the launch of a Massclusivity campaigns of this
brand. We collect a total of 10,689 interactions from March 2017 to March 2018. Findings
highlight that the development of massclusivity campaigns have several impacts, such as
generate awareness towards the brand, increases consumers’ engagement on SNP, and
promotes communities’ expansion. These are directly connected to the interest that this type
of marketing strategies generates towards the brands, which may be considered powerful to
luxury brands who intend to diversify their audience and become more competitive.
Keywords: Massclusivity; Brand love; Online Brand Communities;
Track: Relationship Marketing
fast-growing. The high value charged by these goods also displays the resources scarcity and
constraints, combined with limited production and distribution, contribute to define luxury as
something unique, rare and selective (Heine, 2012). To Kapferer and Valette-Florence (2018)
luxury value is based on perceived rarity and the feeling that not everyone can or should
possess a specific luxury product or brand. It is usually also mentioned as opulence and
wealthiest lifestyle (Brun and Castelli, 2013). As Kapferer and Valette-Florence (2016: 125)
mentioned: “Luxury brands must be selective in everything they do”, and this is the
foundation of these brands distinctiveness and singularity”.
2.2 Consumer-brand relationship in fashion and luxury
As stated by Fournier (1998), Brand Relationship Quality may be sustained by one of the
following facets: love and passion (based on a deep emotional interaction), self-connection
(related to expression and identity concerns), interdependence (represented by a high number
of intense interactions), commitment (grounded on loyalty, support and reliability), intimacy
(relations with strong roots and layers) and brand partner quality (based on the satisfaction
that exists between the two parties of a relationship). The dynamics of customer–brand
relationships has becoming a topic of interest since late nineties of 20th Century” (Loureiro,
2015) and, consequently, fashion luxury brands are increasingly following the relationship
marketing path considering that when a consumer believes that he or she can rely on the
brand, it facilitates the development of a love feeling (Albert & Merunka, 2013; Batra et al.,
2.3 Massclusivity
Luxury market is facing a major shift (Brun & Castelli, 2013) towards a luxury
democratization in which is targeting an expanded clientele (Kapferer & Valette-Florence,
2016) and widening range of offers from firms (Truong et al., 2009). Also, Internet had a
solid influence on Luxury Fashion Brands reinvention since it made luxury fashion more
accessible to everyone (Brogi et al., 2013) and because it is considered a mass medium of
communication (Baker et al., 2018). This is how several new types of luxury were born,
including Massclusivity. This stands for masses and exclusivity and aims selling exclusive
products for the masses by combining a high perceived prestige with reasonable price
premiums to attract middle-class consumers (Truong et al., 2009), who desire to follow the
lifestyles of richer classes (Mundel et al., 2017).
3. Methodology
3.1 Netnography and text-mining
Netnography is compared to ethnography (the study of cultures and societies) since it
provides data about consumers’ habits and lifestyle. However, it is transplanted and adapted
to online communities (Kozinets, 2002; Brown et al., 2003), which are defined as groups of
people with similar interests, that interact, discuss and influence each other (Kozinets, 2002)
at online platforms. This research is based on a solid and confirmed approach, already
validated and tested by several authors (e.g., Bilro et al., 2018), with the purpose of
understanding the behavior of luxury consumers and fashion mass market consumers on
online brand communities towards massive luxury, throughout their comments and
interactions on the selected platforms. As so, to assure that luxury and mass market
perspectives are represented on this netnography analysis, the Gucci luxury fashion brand is
selected.
One of the most representative online communities for this brand is Facebook (17 million
followers), from which the data from consumer’s interactions was retrieved. In order to
retrieve and process the amount of data from these platforms with massive communities, it
became necessary to proceed with a text mining technique capable to extract, examine, and
transpose the vast amount of users’ interactions on these OBCs into valuable insights (Fan et
al., 2006). After collecting the data, we develop a Sentiment Analysis to understand the
consumers’ feelings towards the brand. Thus, we opt to use a MeaningCloud as the text
mining tool, which is capable of examining a vast amount of data efficiently.
3.2 Selection of Gucci campaign
Gucci aims to redefine luxury concept. This new mindset led to a revolution on these brands’
campaigns which are more focused on digital strategies and that target a vast audience when
compared to traditional luxury campaigns. Gucci has developed several social media
campaigns with media repercussions, since they are usually responsible for generating high
levels of electronic word-of-mouth contents due to their innovative and revolutionary
contents, leading to a robust brand presence on social network platforms (Ong, 2017).
The research period for our Gucci’s netnography analysis was carefully chosen based on
the launch of a specific campaign that generate controversies among the public. On March
17th, 2017, Gucci launched a campaign named #TFWGucci (Gucci, 2017b), which reveals
the focus on digital communication based on the use of the hashtag (#) that is also part of an
internet trend and phenomenon - #TFW stands for “That Feeling When” – responsible for
several user generated content. This exclusively digital campaign was developed considering
the need to generate awareness towards the launch of Le Marché des Merveilles collection of
watches. The main characteristic of this campaign was the communication through Memes
2017 March 554 5%
2017 April 64 1% 2017 May 168 2% 2017 June 68 1% 2017 July 416 4% 2017 August 459 4% 2017 September 1106 10% 2017 October 972 9% 2017 November 377 4% 2017 December 551 5% 2018 January 1,252 12% 2018 February 2,548 24% 56% 2018 March 2,154 20% Total 10,689 100% 100%
Table 2. Timely Distribution of Interactions on Gucci’s Facebook page.
We then perform a sentiment analysis based on these 10,689 comments of Gucci brand
followers on its Facebook page, so we can comprehend the feelings associated with each one
of these interactions. This sentiment analysis identifies the polarity of each interaction, i.e., if
the user’s comment is positive, negative or neutral (table 3).
Interactions’ Polarity scale Scale Sum % P-N% P+ 5 1,121 10% 31% P 4 2,181 20% NEU/NONE 3 5,219 49% 49% N 2 1,625 15% 20% N+ 1 543 5% Total 10,689 100% 100%
Table 3. Gucci Facebook OBC’s Interactions Polarity Scale.
The second stage is the topic sentiment analysis aiming to define the main topics
addressed by the users at Gucci’s Facebook OBC and the frequency that they are mentioned.
It also enabled the polarity classification of each topic. While scrutinizing all of the 10,
comments from Gucci’s Facebook page, there were 14,537 sentiment topics identified from
204 different categories. As explained on this research’s Methodology, these topics were
aggregated by 26 clusters.
Topic Sentiment Analysis - Clusters Frequency Clusters Defined SUM % Person 5,668 39% Fashion Product (cosmetic, accessory, clothes, footwear or others) 1,189 8% Vocation & Titles 684 5% Other Products (food & beverages, electronic appliances, vehicles or others) 539 4% Place (city, town, street or others) 529 4% Store 420 3% Entities (language, doctrine, religion, meanings or others) 372 3% Group of People 312 2% Nature (outdoor spaces or others) 269 2% Animals (design, texture or others) 234 2% Cultural Product (music, picture, show or others) 211 1% Companies 201 1% Body (or body parts) 180 1% Public Organizations (Government, Military, Education or others) 168 1% Contacts 139 1%
Currency 136 1% Hashtags 105 1% Services 91 1% Social Events 85 1% Process 78 1% Time (period, date) 77 1% Nature (design, texture or others) 68 0% Other Units (time, weight or others) 50 0% Natural Phenomena 38 0% Artistic & Sports Organizations 30 0% Other 2,663 18% Total 14,536 100%
Table 4. Clusters’ Frequency of Gucci’s Facebook OBC.
The frequency of these clusters on this concrete analysis is detailed on Table 4, and
according to this data, the most mentioned topic is “Person” (39%). On Facebook, the
consumers who want to identify other individuals to a certain brand publication have to do it
by writing the person’s name on the comment section. This information may induce that the
contents shared by Gucci at Facebook promote a high engagement level, because its users
identify other users and friends, which may lead to the conclusion that Gucci is investing on
this community’s culture by posting contents able to provoke interactions among consumers
that bring other persons into this Facebook page, enabling a community expansion. The next
cluster considered as the second with a higher frequency is Fashion Product (cosmetic,
accessory, clothes, footwear or others). Since Gucci is a Luxury Fashion Brand, the frequency
of 8% (table 4) of this cluster indicates that the users from this OBC are effectively
commenting the fashion products represented on Gucci’s communication at Facebook, which
is the main core of this brand. Thus, these interactions are aligned with the brands’ main
focus: fashion.
The third main cluster is “Vocation & Titles” that aims to aggregate the interactions that
mention a vocation of a person or even a job title (e.g., creative director, designer, model,
monarch). It has an expression of 5% (table 4), demonstrating that these interactions with
Gucci are aspirational and associated with the essence of a luxury brand that wants to embrace
and communicate their professionalism, heritage, quality and usually reinforce the position of
its main designer. As previously stated, Gucci is focused on changing its traditional luxury
brand strategy to a more disruptive approach, and it is essentially depending on its creative
director - Alessandro Michelle. Having this specific cluster on the podium may induce
consumers’ recognition of this fact.
The Topic Sentiment Analysis also enables the evaluation of the polarity of the topics and
clusters defined (table 5). The cluster with the highest polarity average score and with the
strongest positive feeling associated - with a score of 3.38 – is the cluster “Store”, with a low
standard deviation of 0.74. Hence, it is possible to mention that Gucci Facebook OBC’s users
5. Conclusions and implications
Based on the findings, we may conclude that the massclusivity campaign under analysis
promote the emergence of several impacts for the luxury fashion brand and for the fashion
mass market brand. However, those impacts did not have a significant influence on the brand
love or hate of the members of the OBCs of each brand. Nevertheless, this strategy provides a
positive outcome to Gucci who achieved a high polarity average of its community members’
interactions. To the generality of consumers, the ability of the selected luxury brand – Gucci -
to become closer to the masses did not affect negatively the perception they had towards the
brand, considering that the sentiments associated to the users’ interactions was higher than the
one attributed to the mass market brand. Despite some negative comments regarding Gucci’s
disruptive strategy, the differentiation from the other luxury brands with contents with topics
usually adopted by the masses generated conversation among users, considering that the most
relevant clusters on this analysis are based on consumers’ identification of their peers. Thus, it
induces that consumers’ perception towards Gucci may have change to a more open brand
which stands near its audience, since the tendency is to promote a community and the
respective engagement increase, due to the evolution and growth of consumers’ interactions
during the months of the research period established, especially on the Facebook OBC.
Regarding practical implications for marketing managers on luxury fashion brands’
segment and their community management, we can point out that online brand communities
on SNP are a strong channel to reinforce and sustain the relationships between customers and
the brands. Also, the development of Massclusivity campaigns display high levels of
consumers’ interactions and their identification of other users. Considering that luxury fashion
brands are currently facing a major turnover due to the ever-changing environment of new
forms of communication, this market is revelling a high competition since brands are trying to
differentiate themselves from the competitors (e.g.: Gucci hiring a disruptive artist to assume
the role of Creative director and to develop Massclusivity campaigns). As so, to overcome the
obstacles of this competition, these brands must attract new customers and expand their action
to other type of public.
Marketing managers may also consider understanding what type of topics they must be
focused on when communicating with their communities and to comprehend the need of
maintain an active brand community with valuable contents for its users. These findings aim
to sustain an enduring relationship capable of generating brand love, specifically if managers
promote the interaction between brands and its communities, to understand users’ feedback
and insights on the creation of Massclusivity campaigns. Only by listening consumers’
feedback on brand communities, luxury brands will be able to understand what they value on
these exclusive campaigns and products for the masses and where is the line that the brands
itself should not cross to avoid brand dilution.
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