Projecting Authenticity Through Advertising: Consumer Judgments of Advertisers' Claims

TLDR

Authenticity is a cornerstone of contemporary marketing, yet advertising is often seen as antithetical, raising the question of how firms can build authentic brand positions through advertising. The study examines how consumers assess authenticity claims of Trappist and Abbey beer brands. The authors identify three forms of authenticity—pure, approximate, and moral—to structure their analysis. Consumers use either indexical or iconic cues to judge authenticity, with cue type and abstraction varying across the three authenticity forms, and they are misled by careful advertisements because indexical and iconic cues are more closely related than previously thought.

Abstract

Authenticity is a cornerstone of contemporary marketing. Yet how do firms develop brand positions based on authenticity when marketing, and in particular, advertising, is believed to be antithetical to such positioning? We examine how consumers assess the claims of Trappist and Abbey beer brands. We identify three forms of authenticity: pure (literal) authenticity, approximate authenticity, and moral authenticity. In each case, consumers draw on either indexical or iconic cues to form judgments of authenticity, although the type of cue and degree of abstraction differ across the three types. We also find that the informants are duped by careful advertisements, and explain this by proposing that the relationships between indexical and iconic cues are closer than previously thought.