Environmental concerns in brand love and hate: an emerging market’s purview of masstige consumers

Abstract

PurposeFashion brands are one of the strongest means of expressing consumers identity. This study explores and empirically validates the concepts of brand love and hate for masstige fashion brands from the purview of emerging markets. This study deciphers three components of masstige fashion brand promise through the lens of hedonic identity, uniqueness and expected social gains for the affluent middle-class consumers. The model is complemented by the impact of environmental and society’s well-being.Design/methodology/approachEmpirical evidence was obtained through an online survey in India. Total of 222 complete responses were used to test hypotheses by fitting a model with the partial least squares algorithm.FindingsFashion brand love is triggered by consumers’ hedonic identity and expected social gains. Brand hate is fuelled by environmental and societal well-being concerns, expected social gains and uniqueness. Theoretical contribution is threefold: First, the relevance of social and environmental consequences reflecting consumers’ accepted responsibility for their masstige consumption is introduced. Second, the study deciphers the emotions related to masstige brand love and brand hate for emerging market’s affluent middle-class. Third, empirical results contribute to the ongoing discussion on whether brand hate and love are two distinct concepts or collapse to be two extremes of one and the same continuum.Practical implicationsMiddle-class consumers in India are strict in their avoidance and rejection of the lower classes’ preferred fashion brands. Targeting must consider the social classes hierarchy. Marketing-mix design, particularly prices and distribution networks, need to enable a distinction between the social classes.Social implicationsMasstige fashion brand love and hate turn out to be two distinct constructs that co-exist rather than being two extremes of one and the same dimension.Originality/valueIndian middle-class consumers satisfy their need of environmental and social caretaking by avoidance and brand hate but continue to choose masstige brands to demonstrate social status and are not modernizing their traditional accumulative materialism.