Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper studies how small and medium enterprises (SME), Spanish fashion companies, operationalize Lifestyle Branding strategy. Previous conceptualizations on lifestyle branding are broadened and a theory-building, visual display of a conceptual model is proposed. A qualitative, multiple-case study research is chosen to address the “how” and “why” of lifestyle branding. The data collection consists of multiple sources of information –ranging from interviews, documents and observation, both of company material as well as online communication channel Instagram. Two sets of four fashion brands are chosen to discover how lifestyle branding translated differently among each group: physical-retail born, medium-sized brands (PH), more years of creation and born-online, pureplayer, smaller sized brands (BO), of less years of creation. They belong to different product categories: apparel, shoes, menswear, accessories, lingerie and intimate wear. In addition, the choice of companies with some track record and turnover was taken into account. The method of thematic analysis is used through Atlas.ti 7.5.18 qualitative software for coding and to extract themes and allow for semantic meanings to arise for each fashion brand and across the group set. The main findings are to present a set of lifestyle branding dimensions which have not previously arisen in literature, discovering how some Spanish SME fashion brands are more lifestyle-oriented versus others with a product/market orientation, and how lifestyle branding is more than mere lifestyle imagery. A salient contribution is that lifestyle branding is a more brand-oriented positioning, tied to the brand authenticity and a more digitally-oriented type of branding approach.