Brand Trust and Authenticity: The link between trust in brands and the consumer's role on the market

Summary, in English

Consumers increasingly demand that brand authenticity means that the brand's values are aligned with the corporation's actions, which are made transparent (Holt 2002). Interrogating Holt's claim that "consumer resistance" is inevitably staged in the marketplace, I suggest that the implications of seeing brand authenticity as linked to trust are related to how the consumer's role on the market is perceived. I argue that as a consequence of "consumer resistance" taking place in the market, there will be a power asymmetry between consumers and brands, increasing the vulnerability of consumers, and affecting the form that the consumer-brand trust relationships can take.

• Author: Clara Gustafsson
• Publishing year: 2006
• Language: English
• Pages: 522-527
• Publication/Series: European Advances in Consumer Research
• Volume: 7
• Links: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/eacr/vol7/EuropeanVolume7_90.pdf
• Document type: Conference paper
• Publisher: Association for Consumer Research
• Topic: Business Administration
• Status: Published