Abstract:

The existing documents put forward that the one of the main characteristics of postmodern consumption is the consumption of signs or symbols, but at the same time, postmodern consumer culture also lead to consumers’ disloyalty to brand or image. This study suggests that whether consumers’ postmodernity (or the nature of postmodern consumer) will reduce their loyalty to brand as symbol depends on the concrete symbolic image of brand. The result shows that not all of positive effects of symbolic brand image (including: personal, social, relational, and collective) on consumers’ loyalty to brand will be weakened because of the nature of postmodern consumer. In fact, the negative effects of postmodernity on loyalty to brand mainly reflects in the interaction effects existed between the nature of postmodern consumer and brand’s relational image; when a brand has personal or social image, due to existing the opposite effects offsetting each other existed between hyperreality and self-fragmentation on loyalty to symbolic brand, the negative effects of postmodernity are not pessimistic as same as existing documents expected; finally, when a brand has collective image, there will be salient positive effect of postmodernity on loyalty to brand.

Key words: Postmodernity, Hyperreality, Self Fragmentation, Symbolic Brand Image, Loyalty to Brand