Consumer Need for Authenticity: Conceptualization and Scale Development

• Main Authors: Yu-Yi Ma, 馬友薏
• Other Authors: 廖淑伶
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/74393401469261287768

博士 === 元智大學 === 管理研究所 === 97 === Consumers who are willing to spend more money or time to acquire ‘real products’, authentic products, to satisfy their needs for authenticity (NFA) are on the increase in both foreign and domestic markets. Many Marketers take advantage of this consumption trend to attract this kind of consumers by authentic brand position, storytelling marketing and experiential marketing. A number of studies have also investigated a wide variety of authenticity issues, and these marketing practices and research investigations show that authenticity has been an important theme in practical and academic areas, but most of those studies focused on specific industry or product category. For realizing this consumption value, a serious of qualitative and quantitative researches were undertaken by this study to conceptualize consumer need for authenticity and to develop its scale beyond specific industries or product categories. After personal interviews with ten consumers, this study identified six properties of authenticity, two types of authentic product character categories, one is product benefit, the other one is consumer perceived non-product benefit, and this study also discovered three kinds of consumption motives about consumer seeking for need for authenticity: product, personal and situational motive. This study also contrasted consumers with different NFA levels in five types of consumption attitude. Then, this study brought up the definition of consumer need for authenticity. Finally, this study brought up six propositions about consumer need for authenticity and contrasted the differences between consumer seeking for satisfaction of NFA and materialist, consumer seeking for NFA and consumer seeking for need for uniqueness. The other part of this study detailed the development of consumer need for authenticity scale, which was designed to measure individual differences in consumption attitude influencing by different level of NFA. According to scholars’ suggestions about scale development procedures, the consumer need for authenticity scale was constructed based on the findings of the qualitative study. Passing through expert check, content validity check, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, split-half reliability test and criteria-related validity test, this study finally have a consumer need for authenticity scale of seven factors, and 29 items. Then, the nomological validity test was held to confirm scale’s applicability and validity.