The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of country of origin (COO) on the UK fashion industry, with specific reference to retail and wholesale brands. In this study, the fashion industry encompasses both manufacturing and branding perspectives. This qualitative study comprised 23 in-depth interviews with key informants from large-scale retailers, manufacturers and textile consultancy companies, thereby analysing the issues from an industry, rather than consumer, perspective. The key informants were chosen using a judgmental sampling approach, and the data obtained were analysed using a thematic approach. The notion of country of origin is deemed important because the existing literature suggests that COO, has been considered as an effective branding device with which consumers associate when evaluating the quality of the product and when making purchasing decisions. However, no research has examined country of origin from an industry perspective, and the findings in the UK context are limited in the existing literature. Consequently, this study contributes to the body of knowledge about the importance of COO, and its implication on retail and wholesale brands in the UK fashion industry. The findings of this research also have practical implications for manufacturers and retailers, informing the debate on the value of the 'Made in [...]' epithet, and how country of origin can be used as a branding strategy. This study demonstrates that country of origin is considered important in the UK fashion industry in terms of its strategic importance to organisations. Moreover, COO is manifested in different ways, depending on brand positioning, long-term strategic plan, expertise, brand history and values. Another finding that emerged as a key theme is the blurring of retail and wholesale brands. Thus, the study has found that retailers are becoming wholesale-oriented businesses by selling own label products through third party retailers, including online via pure-play retailers (e.g. ASOS), and concessions within department stores. This is being done to expose brands internationally, to develop a global recognition, as well as improve the brand image. Furthermore, wholesale brands are becoming retail-oriented in order to enjoy superior profit margins, to have control over the product merchandise and to increase customer loyalty. Finally, the study developed a typology of strategic action and implications of country of origin to include the blurring of differences whereby, for instance, brand name is used to promote country of brand origin by both retail and wholesale brands, however, how this manifests itself differs in the sense that retailers promote via sub-brand name, and wholesales have associations with company's name.

The overall focus of this doctoral thesis is the examination of the role of store design-architecture in consumer perceptions of retail brand loyalty. More specifically, it examines how consumers’ perceptions at the store design-architecture level promote brand loyalty and attachment at the overall retail-level. This research, therefore, aims to address the underdeveloped extant knowledge of the role of the store design-architecture in retail branding. This thesis addresses two research questions: 1) is it possible to improve on the specification or measurement of the store environment beyond the novelty, complexity collative constructs proposed in traditional studies of the store environment?; and 2) what effect, if any, do these improved store environment constructs (from answering research question number one) have in explaining the role of store design-architecture in consumer perceptions of retail brand loyalty? In its examination of the role of store-level design-architecture in overall retail-level branding, the theoretical significance of this thesis is based on two activities. First, this thesis proposes a conceptual framework that draws on multiple, diverse literatures from design-architecture, psychology and marketing. The critical review of pertinent literatures from these three sources then enables the second activity: the generation of novel empirical insights based on surveys of consumer perceptions of store-level design-architecture. A research instrument is developed that compares higher and lower levels of design in two stores of Penneys, a discount fashion retailer. The responses of 145 consumers are examined in an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). A separate dataset of 403 consumer responses are analysed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equations Modelling (SEM). Multiple-group invariance testing is also completed on this dataset. The primary theoretical contributions of this thesis to the extant literature are five-fold. First, the principal contribution of this thesis confirms that store aesthetic preference is positively associated with retail brand loyalty. Thus, the second research question is satisfactorily addressed; I explain that there is a mild association between store aesthetic preference and the emotionally valenced retail brand attachment construct in higher-level design contexts. Instead, a store aesthetic preference association is observed with the more behaviourally valenced retail brand loyalty construct in lower-level designs. Consequently, this principal contribution to the extant literature reveals the perceptive dynamic of how consumers processing of store-level design-architecture correspond with their perceptions of retail-level brand loyalty. A host of global-attribute, objective-subjective, and cognitive-emotional perceptive processing at the store and retail levels are observed in the proposed theoretical framework. Second, to confirm the role of store design-architecture in retail brand loyalty, I develop: a new scale for retail brand product; modify scales for store prototype, store novelty, store aesthetic preference, store complexity and retail brand price; and introduce scales for brand attachment and brand loyalty from non-retail contexts into a retail context for the first time. This research, therefore, addresses research question number one by making a notable conceptual and measurement contribution to the specification of the store environment. Third, as a progression from the previous contribution, I use these improved store environments constructs to better specify the store environment, and examine the associations between store prototype, store novelty and store aesthetic preference. I demonstrate that theory such as the preference-for-prototypes literature helps to improve the extant understanding of the associations between store prototype, store novelty and store aesthetic preference. The confirmation of the existence of these associations essentially means that the proposed model is robust, credible and able to account for consumers objective-subjective, global-attribute discriminations of the store-level aesthetic. Fourth, in an effort to explain the relative visual and non-visual contributions to retail brand attachment and retail brand loyalty, I examine associations concerning retail brand product and retail brand price. Retail brand product is confirmed to have stronger associations with retail brand attachment than store aesthetic preference or store prototypicality. Thus, this research extends the extant knowledge of the relative contributions of visual and non-visual constructs to understanding retail brand loyalty. Fifth, this research contributes to the extant understanding of how non-invariance analysis can be employed in Structural Equations Modelling (SEM) to confirm differences between groups. This research examines differences in parameter values to confirm differences in perception of the higher and lower levels of store design-architecture. This type of use of non-invariance analysis is not frequently employed in SEM and I propose that this research instrument can be generalised to other retail contexts also. Finally, this thesis concludes by presenting the limitations of this research. It makes suggestions on potential future research that could be completed, and raises some pertinent implications for practitioners arising from this research.

Syfte och Forskningsfrågor: Syftet med uppsatsen är att fördjupa förståelsen för musikens kulturella betydelse när den används tillsammans med ett retailvarumärkes identitet. För att nå vårt syfte har vi arbetat med följande forskningsfrågor: • Hur är musik integrerat i organisationers marknadskommunikationer och brand management? • Vilka följder får musikanvändningen på varumärkets identitet och målgrupp? Hur är denna identitet sedan internaliserad av kunder som konsumerar varumärket? • Hur kan en bättre förståelse för dessa frågor leda till en mer relevant musikanvändning inom brand management? • Vilka är sedan möjligheterna att bygga relationer med kunder genom användningen av musik? Metod: Vi har jobbat abduktivt med uppsatsen där teorin och empirin har ständigt skänkt nya insikter och tolkningsmöjligheter åt varandra. Vi har också använt oss av en kvalitativ metod som vi anser bättre lämpad för undersökning av kulturella kontexter än vad en kvantitativ metod är. Slutsatser: Vi har sett att det finns flera sätt att använda musik i retailupplevelsen och på olika nivåer. Musik kan förstärka redan existerande teman eller genom sina sociala egenskaper hjälpa kunder att förstå varumärkesidentitet. En kund kommer alltid att internalisera ett varumärkes kommunikation och tolka dessa genom sina egna sociala konstruktioner och övertygelser för att sedan kasta tillbaka en avkodad bild. Genom denna förståelse och tolkning byggs relationer mellan retailföretag och kunder. Med en utökad förståelse för dessa frågor kan retailvarumärken öka relevansen i sin musikanvändning och möjliggöra att varumärket blir en del i kunders identitetsskapandeprocess. / SAMMANFATTNING Titel: Musikidentiteter inom retailbranding: Hur förståelse för musikgenrer skapar förståelse för varumärkesidentitet Författare: Grant Murdoch Purdy och Johan Plambeck Handledare: Olle Duhlin Kurs: Kandidatuppsats inom företagsekonomi, inriktning marknadsföring, HT-2013 Music & Event Management, Linnéuniversitetet Nyckelord: varumärke, retailvarumärke, varumärkesidentitet, identitet, identitetsskapande, sinnesmarknadsföring, musik, kultur, subkultur Syfte och Forskningsfrågor: Syftet med uppsatsen är att fördjupa förståelsen för musikens kulturella betydelse när den används tillsammans med ett retailvarumärkes identitet. För att nå vårt syfte har vi arbetat med följande forskningsfrågor: • Hur är musik integrerat i organisationers marknadskommunikationer och brand management? • Vilka följder får musikanvändningen på varumärkets identitet och målgrupp? Hur är denna identitet sedan internaliserad av kunder som konsumerar varumärket? • Hur kan en bättre förståelse för dessa frågor leda till en mer relevant musikanvändning inom brand management? • Vilka är sedan möjligheterna att bygga relationer med kunder genom användningen av musik? Metod: Vi har jobbat abduktivt med uppsatsen där teorin och empirin har ständigt skänkt nya insikter och tolkningsmöjligheter åt varandra. Vi har också använt oss av en kvalitativ metod som vi anser bättre lämpad för undersökning av kulturella kontexter än vad en kvantitativ metod är.  Slutsatser: Vi har sett att det finns flera sätt att använda musik i retailupplevelsen och på olika nivåer. Musik kan förstärka redan existerande teman eller genom sina sociala egenskaper hjälpa kunder att förstå varumärkesidentitet. En kund kommer alltid att internalisera ett varumärkes kommunikation och tolka dessa genom sina egna sociala konstruktioner och övertygelser för att sedan kasta tillbaka en avkodad bild. Genom denna förståelse och tolkning byggs relationer mellan retailföretag och kunder. Med en utökad förståelse för dessa frågor kan retailvarumärken öka relevansen i sin musikanvändning och möjliggöra att varumärket blir en del i kunders identitetsskapandeprocess. / ABSTRACT Title: Music identities in retail branding: How genre rules form understandings of brand identity Key words: branding, retail branding, sensory marketing, brand identity, identity creation, identity, music, music genres, subculture The purpose of this thesis is to better understand the social ramifications of using music together with retail branding. The key point of interest is how understandings of brand identities are connected to (sub)cultural understandings of music identities. To do this the authors examine two Swedish retail brands, both of whom have clearly defined music profiles, but also have decidedly different target audiences active within decidedly different subcultural realms. To address the dynamic social exchange inherent in identity creation the paper uses both a theoretical brand management framework as well as an ethnological approach. The paper is divided into three areas of interest that address different facets of the branding process in relation to identity. First, how brand identity is communicated and the different communication points where music is used. Second, how brand identity is understood by consumers and how consumers in turn understand music-based brand identities with the help of genre rules. Third, how brand identity helps build relationships, how this is connected to retail brand loyalty and what role music has within these two processes. The authors conclude by presenting a new model for better understanding how the formation of brand identity and individual (sub)cultural identities are interconnected, as well as how these findings can be used by retail brands in the future to better engage target audiences with music.