Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

Validation of Brand Experience Instrument to measure Young Consumers Experience with Fashion Brands
Ahmed Rageh, Fayoum University, Egypt
T C Melewar, Brunel University, U.K.
Marc Fetscherin, Rollins College, USA
Abstract
Brand experience is a relatively new concept in the marketing literature. It has been considered and important element
in understanding consumer behaviour. This study, through primary data collection and analysis, validates and extends a
brand experience scale initially proposed by Brakus et al (2009) to the fashion industry. The results show that the scale
should be modified to be relevant in the evaluation of fashion brands choices. The emerging fashion brand experience
scale is the first step towards the conceptualisation of fashion brand experience and may be useful for practitioners
when profiling purchasing customers.
Keywords: Brand experience, measurement, constructs validity, fashion brands.
Introduction
Pine and Gilmore (1999) describe the existing economy as ‗the new experience economy‘ highlighting an increasing
tendency towards delivering a configuration of unique, rewarding, and fulfilling (URF) experience to gain a competitive
advantage. A careful review of the extant marketing literature revealed that there have been few attempts to define the
concept of customer experience and its dimensions. In other words, the concept is poorly defined (Caru and Cova,
2003). A recent attempt by Brakus et al., (2009) has conceptualized brand experience as subjective, internal consumer
responses (sensations, feelings, and cognitions) and behavioural responses evoked by brand-related stimuli that are part
of a brand‘s design and identity, packaging, communications, and environments. To date no empirical studies have
validated the brand experience scale proposed by Brakus et al (2009) and this work aims to fill such gap.
Dimensions of Brand Experience
The ‗multi-aspect‘ conceptualization of experience can be traced back to Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) when they
conceptualized the consumption experience under the heading of ―Fantasies, feelings and fun‖. The experience
dimensions are evoked by brand-related stimuli (e.g., colours, shapes, typefaces, designs, slogans, mascots, brand
characters). There is no one-to-one correspondence, such that a certain stimulus type would trigger a certain experience
dimension and only that dimension. For example, although colours, shapes, typefaces, and designs usually result in
sensory experience, they may also result in emotions (e.g., red for Coca-Cola) or intellectual experiences (e.g., when
designs use complex patterns). (Barakus et al., 2009, p.53)
The pioneers of the experience economy Pine and Gilmore (1999) claimed that experience consists of four dimensions:
aesthetic, educational, entertaining, and escapist experiences. Additionally, Schmitt (1999) proposes five experiences:
sense, feel, think, act, and relate. On the basis of the above literature, Brakus et al., (2009) developed a brand experience
scale that captures the dimensions of brand experience. They employed a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor
analyses for item reduction and confirmation of dimensions. the authors came up with four dimensions: sensory,
affective, behavioural, and intellectual factors. They generated items for scale development along the five experience
dimensions that were used in the current study.
This research is based on the observation that when consumers complete brand experience scales, some of the scales‘
items are not usually relevant, and that will depend on the brand being assessed. Additionally, it may be relevant to
extend the current brand experience scale so as to encompass determinant factors that are specific of the product or of
the industry under assessment.
Methods
Given the effort employed by fashion managers to develop fashion brads as to evoke a customer experience, this study
has selected fashion brands as the application domain to ascertain the validation of the brad experience scale developed
by Brakus et al (2009) Moreover, this study selected young consumers for the validation of the brand experience scale
due to their interest in identifying themselves with the experience that the fashion brands they purchase can generate,
rather than simply the clothes.
Brand experience scale developed by Brakus et al., (2009) is used in this study to assess consumer experience with their
brands through four dimensions: sensory, affective, behavioural and intellectual. There are three items in each
dimension; every item uses a 7-point Likert scale for measurement ranging from ―1=strongly disagree to 7=strongly
agree‖. The data collection was conducted in London among undergraduate students at Brunel University. Selfadministered
questionnaires were distributed among university students. A sample of 75 students was selected with ages
between 16 and 22 years old. Respondents with age less than 16 years represent 1.3%, students with ages between 16
and less than 22 represents 74.7% and student with ages more than 22 represents 24% of the total sample. Students were
from both genders (33.3% male and 66.7% female).
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