Brand Performativity and Consumers’ Cultivation of Identity Value

How do brands provide identity value to consumers? The marketing literature provides three primary answers to this key managerial question: by building brand communities; by forging anthropomorphized relations whereby consumers regard brands as relationship partners; and by following cultural branding principles. This article argues that these three conceptual frameworks have often misdiagnosed the sources of the identity value that consumers derive from brands. Accordingly, it proposes that brand performativity is an unrecognized explanatory factor that underlies these extant theorizations. Drawing on sociological theories of performativity, it conceptualizes brand performativity as an arrangement of discourses, practices, material resources, normative standards, metrics, and goals that coalesce as a script that consumers can use to cultivate identity value through brand-mediated experiences. Through an analysis of CrossFit, it demonstrates that a theoretical sensitivity to brand performativity provides a fuller picture of how brands generate consumer identity value. It explains how this conceptualization revises strategic implications that follow from the aforementioned theorizations, especially for brands implementing more extensive modes of performativity. It closes with a discussion of the broader applicability of brand performativity framework and how it can help marketing managers transcend the conventional product versus service brand and functional versus expressive branding strategy distinctions.