Abstract:
The broad objective of this thesis is to extend understanding of how consumers use brands in ways that impact on their social selves and their connections with others, with a focus on the consumption of brand narratives. While brand narratives, in the general form of advertisements, are widely accepted as impacting on national identity by cultural theorists, a review of the relevant marketing and consumer research literature on brands, self and social identity and national identity demonstrates a lack of knowledge about national identity as it relates to brand experiences. It is proposed that there is a significant theoretical gap in the literature regarding how brands affect national identity. More particularly, consumers' lived experiences of brand and national identity represent a gap in the literature that is worthy of investigation. To address these gaps this thesis adopts an interpretive narrative approach to investigate the role that brand experiences play in national identity and to develop theory that expands our understanding of brands as experiential entities for use in national identity projects. A series of activities are conducted, including the generation of autobiographical life-history narratives, depth interviews with friendship pairs of consumers and the production of co-created narratives in response to familiar television advertisements, using a hermeneutic approach to analysis and sense making. The findings show that national identity is experienced by consumers via imagery and narratives of national identity provided by brand communications. Four different social processes, where consumers utilise brand resources to affect national identity were evident in the findings. These findings are presented in detail and discussed in relation to the literature and theory derived from several different disciplines. The study concludes that brands impact on the formation of one's national identity, and that this can occur without brands necessarily being experienced firsthand by the personal self. Through their stories, brands become active cultural agents of national identity. Brands are potentially more powerful resources than previously imagined.