Final Words
of Literature Review
Understanding authenticity is understanding human.
Through research, we open the door to authenticity and see how complex it is.
First, while everyone is talking about the artifact magic of authenticity, there is no universal concept of authenticity here. To sum up, there are two different perspectives of examining authenticity: the perspective of managing brands and the perspective of consumers. Then, we learned about the huge cognitive gap between these two different perspectives, which will likely lead to ineffective publicity of the brand.
Then, We explored what exactly consumers want: the objective reality of the brand, achieving self-identify through brand value, experiencing, not just purchasing, and so on. For consumers, Authenticity often means different things in different situations. Authenticity is something about people, It is so mysterious because of its complexity. This complexity leads to challenges facing brands.
Finally, we found the main challenges facing brands: 1. The cognitive gap with consumers; 2. Taking adventures of being imperfect; 3. The troubles of keeping insisting on brand values. The challenges facing brands also vary in different situations. There is no one-size-fits-all.
This leads me to a certain way of next phase: avoiding general and crude research on brand authenticity and studing a consumer group precisely: Authenticity from the view of Chinese Generation-Z girls.