The six ingredients of authenticity
The marketing literature is filled with idiosyncratic definitions of what it means for consumption to be authentic. This is a problem for both researchers and managers, as the term "authenticity" takes a variety of meanings, only loosely related to one another, with the inevitable result of conceptual ambiguity (i.e., what do we mean with authenticity?) and managerial lack of guidance (i.e., how to make a product/service authentic?).
Take music, one of the most consumed contents in our daily life: we discovered that consumers attribute authenticity to songs by artists who "have the ability to create something new", but also "engage with fans", "write their own songs", "are free to choose what to sing", "talk about what they have really experienced", and have "respect for traditions and styles of a certain genre". These features tap into pretty different meanings of authenticity, not necessarily related one with the other: for example, creating something new (that we labeled as originality) is sometimes at odds with having respect for traditions (labeled as legitimacy) or writing their own songs (labeled as proficiency). At the same time, being free to choose what to sing (called integrity) does not ensure to engage with fans (known as connectedness) or talking about what has been really experienced (known as accuracy).
These six different meanings apply to many other consumption categories, with differences in the weight consumers attribute to them in constituting authenticity. For example, we found that the proficiency dimension is more important when consumers evaluate hedonic products (e.g., gaming consoles, chocolate) rather utilitarian ones (e.g., toilet paper, washing machines), while the opposite is true for legitimacy. Regarding services, originality appears as more important when consumers consider low coproduction offers (e.g., sport events, utilities) rather than high coproduction ones (e.g., restaurants, health).
We thus discover that, for each product, authenticity from a consumption standpoint is a weighted composite of those six loosely related meanings (accuracy, connectedness, integrity, legitimacy, originality, and proficiency), whereby the weights of these meanings are specific to the consumption context and can markedly change across product and service categories.
Identifying the correct 'recipe' that characterize authenticity for a specific offering is especially important as we discover that authenticity is a partially autonomous driver for purchase intentions: several consumption acts occur in fact even when the consumers do not like the product or the service. For example, a sports car of the 1960s can be considered for purchase – and not only by collectors – because of the authenticity of its original components (originality) and its adherence to standard norms for a muscle car (legitimacy), even if its aesthetical design may not be appreciated and/or its engine parts are not much resilient (i.e., it is not liked as a product 'per se').
In short, authenticity matters a lot for consumption, but it does in different ways for different products: this helps to reconcile the fragmented picture of the current marketing literature on authenticity. Discovering the most effective way to enhance authenticity of specific offerings is instead paramount for marketing managers aiming to succeed in their always more competitive markets.