Misleading visual brand identity: Exploring consumer perceptions

Authenticity has emerged as an important dimension of branding, in which recent studies have sought to understand the attributes and the measurement of this construct. Yet despite these advances, our understanding of this dimension’s relevance and influence on consumer perceptions remains limited. The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of authenticity in relation to a brand’s visual identity, and specifically examine consumer response to a misleading visual identity. To this end, we report the preliminary findings from a pilot survey that solicited the perceptions of high street consumers in response to a visual identity that expresses a misleading country-of-origin. The preliminary findings suggests that whilst consumers felt misled, there was little negative impact on the perception of the brand by its consumers. Early indications reveal that brand authenticity has less relevance to consumers in the fast fashion sector, where the value is placed on the style of the actual merchandise.