Can authenticity be built? Looking for factors that influence authentic brand activism

Framing of the research. Many brands have started acting as political activists, taking public actions in favor of or against contentious issues such as immigration, police brutality, abortion, LGBTQIA + rights, or racism. Brand activism appears to be a strong paradigm change such that brand management is becoming a hot topic among scholars and companies. Purpose of the paper. Authenticity is the key variable of the activist strategy; however, its characteristic elements remain unknown. Thus, this study analyses consumers’ perceptions of Ben & Jerry’s-an historical activist brand-to understand, first, whether it is perceived as authentic; and second, to identify possible factors contributing to authentic brand activism. Methodology. Data was collected from the American Instagram profile of Ben & Jerry’s. All comments were manually checked and analyzed using Infranodus. We performed text network analysis and topic modeling to gain insights from the collected text corpus as well as a users’ sentiment analysis. Based on the obtained positive consumer perceptions, we then examined the official Ben & Jerry’s website, attempting to detect constitutive elements of its authenticity. Results. Some exciting word clusters emerging from topic modeling reveal that activism is a critical element of Ben & Jerry’s consumers’ evaluation, becoming a topic of discussion at the same level as the brand’s products. Additionally, sentiment analysis contributes important insights, confirming the crucial relevance of authenticity in brand activism strategies. Potential constitutive elements of the authenticity of Ben & Jerry’s emerged from the in-depth analysis of consumer perceptions crossed with the examination of Ben & Jerry’s official website.