Analyzing the Cultural Contradictions of Authenticity: Theoretical and Managerial Insights from the Market Logic of Conscious Capitalism

The Semiotic Square as an Analytic Tool

From a semiotic perspective (Greimas 1987), the meaning and categorical boundaries of a given concept are defined through relations to what it is not. For example, the cultural meanings of masculinity have been historically established through contrasts to those that have defined femininity and the related nexus of ever-changing ideals, values, and practices through which this binary contrast has been culturally articulated and transformed over time (Holt and Thompson 2004). These structural relations give rise to ambiguous categories whose associated cultural meanings can become points of contestation and debate, such as in the cases of “metrosexuals” (Rinallo 2007), stay-at-home dads (Coskuner-Balli and Thompson 2013), or the ongoing controversies sparked by the category of transgender athletes (Buzuvis 2021).

The binary opposition between authenticity and inauthenticity presents a similar arrangement of contradictions and ambiguous classifications. Consequently, we propose that authenticity is not a set of discrete properties that distinguish the genuine from the fake—but, rather, an ongoing process of managing a network of contingent relationships. In some markets, for some brands and enterprises, these contingencies may be more stable, whereas in others, they may become more culturally contested and, thus, unstable. We suggest that conscious capitalist brands and businesses, owing to the elitist critique, exemplify this latter and more managerially challenging case.

Figure 1 presents a semiotic square representation of authenticity. In this article, we use the “contradictions of authenticity” as an integrative term that encompasses the structural relations among the semiotic 3Cs (contrariety, complementarity, and contradictory relations).

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Figure 1.

A semiotic model of the authenticity–inauthenticity opposition.

The horizontal arrows represent contrariety relations. These relations are roughly analogous to the standard binary oppositions that anchor semantic differential scales. However, relations of contrariety further indicate that the meaning of a term is defined through a relationship to its binary contrast (e.g., good is understood relative to evil). Accordingly, the meaning of authenticity is always contingent on the operative meaning of inauthenticity, and vice versa. We refer to the authentic ↔ inauthentic contrariety as the primary contrariety relation because it represents the dominant tension that, in turn, sets the complementary terms for the secondary contrariety relation (i.e., not inauthentic ↔ not authentic).

The vertical arrows represent complementarity relations. Such conceptual pairings are compatible and noncontradictory (but are not necessarily synonymous or interchangeable). For example, “not inauthentic” is congruent with the dominant term, authentic. However, this classification also harbors other connotations and, thus, ambiguous meanings. For example, imagine a painting created by a famous artist, say Picasso, who at the time was a fledgling beginner, imitating the style of another painter. Because the painting does not evince Picasso's quintessential artistic motifs, its authenticity becomes ambiguous (and debatable)—that is, at what point in his career does a painting by Picasso truly become a “Picasso”? The term “not inauthentic” conveys this type of ambiguity.

The diagonal arrows represent contradictory relations. These relations indicate that any entity or action deemed to be authentic (or inauthentic) will harbor some qualities that can be judged as contradicting such an assessment. As an illustration, let us again consider the idea of artistic authenticity. From a conventional standpoint, the authenticity of an artist, even a renowned one, can always be challenged on the grounds that their creations exhibit properties that are derivative of other genres, styles, or artistic predecessors (authentic ↔ not authentic). Conversely, the art world's postmodern movement disavows the idea of artistic originality and, instead, celebrates that all artistic productions are, in some sense, a reworking of something prior. As exemplified by Andy Warhol's replications of iconic cultural images (Coca-Cola bottles, Campbell Soup cans, the face of Marilyn Monroe), postmodern art is also heralded for its capacity to surprise and inspire revelatory aesthetic experiences through its creative (and often ironic) uses of repetition, collage, assemblage, montage, and bricolage (inauthentic ↔ not inauthentic) (Heartney 2001). ¹

A Semiotic Conceptualization of Authenticity

In Figure 1, the cloud-like drawings represent the specific cultural meanings that give contextual form to the contradictions of authenticity. For purposes of our analysis, the relevant meaning systems are the market logic of conscious capitalism and the elitist critique. This system of semiotic relationships gives rise to four emergent (and ambiguous) classifications, each harboring latent contradictions. In discussing these ambiguous categories, we first illustrate them in more general terms and then address their manifestations in the context of conscious capitalism and the elitist critique.

The Slow Food Movement

As an institutional entity, Slow Food is a transnational organization encompassing 1,500 local chapters plus numerous subsidiary organizations. Beyond its formal institutional boundaries, Slow Food's culinary practices, values, and activist goals organize ideological and economic alliances among a globally diffused network of food writers (such as Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan), consumers, producers, merchants, and restauranteurs (including celebrity chefs Alice Waters and Jamie Oliver). As Chrzan (2004, p. 131) writes, “The phrase ‘slow food’ strikes a chord among the public not because it is the name of an organization but because it reflects a series of desires, interests and concerns.”

Slow Food discourses valorize meals that are traditionally prepared with fresh ingredients as unique sources of pleasurable experiences that can mobilize consumers to resist the industrialized system of food production. Over the years, the Slow Food movement has embraced a broader conscious capitalist agenda that advocates for sustainable production, environmental protection, and social justice (i.e., fighting hunger, advocating for living wages for agricultural workers; see Chaudhury and Albinsson 2015; Van Bommel and Spicer 2011).

The Elitist Critique of the Slow Food Movement

Like other conscious capitalist exemplars, Slow Food has also been plagued by charges of elitism from its inception in 1986 when its founder, Carlo Petrini, organized a series of public protests over the opening of a McDonald's in the heart of Rome (see Van Bommel and Spicer 2011). This ignominious view of Slow Food finds ready expression in both academic analyses (e.g., Guthman 2007; Laudan 2010) as well as journalistic accounts, such as Gillison (2018), who states that “none of the aggressive, judgmental pitches of the movement have ever been proven. The power of its association with the economic elite has.”

From this skeptical standpoint, Slow Food's exalted rhetoric of sustainable diets, biodiversity, and socially conscious eating (see https://www.slowfood.com/about-us/our-philosophy/) is a guise for privileging upper-middle-class tastes over the dietary practices of less affluent (and lower-cultural-capital) consumer segments (see Kliman and Laudan 2015; Laudan 2010). Even Slow Food's ardent proponents, such as food writer Annie Levy, concede that a tacit elitism has hindered the cultural diffusion of its core principles:

—The revered Alice Waters once said, “when we eat food that is fast, cheap, and easy, we digest those very values.” What are the judgments contained in this kind of statement? She intends, I believe, to critique the values of a food system that doesn’t care about its conditions or effects on people and the environment. But the words suggest that if you eat fast, cheap, and easy you become fast, cheap, and easy—language many women might recognize as shaming. Isn’t this how it really sounds to someone who enjoys such food, or is caught in situations in which it might seem the best available option? (Levy 2019)

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Figure 2.

Fodder for the elitist critique: Slow Food's controversial political alliances.

Once these Slow Food–friendly standards went into effect, news (and social) media began to feature anecdotal reports of children refusing to eat these presumably unpalatable lunches and skyrocketing food waste (Ferdman 2014), with some critics characterizing the program as “gastro-fascism” (Parker 2014). The elitist charge became integral to this cultural (and political) backlash:

Michelle Obama thinks she knows what your children should eat. She's adamant about promoting her nutrition policies for kids, even the new and disastrous school meal standards implementing the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.”… But attending Ivy-League schools doesn’t magically make someone better parent material than an individual who attended a public university, or, dare it be said, someone who didn’t attend college. (Bakst 2014)

The Reflexive Strategy

Slow Food advocates use the reflexive strategy to negate the authenticity challenge of moral pretentiousness. The implication is that Slow Food assigns an unwarranted degree of moral virtue to those who have the economic wherewithal to buy rarefied ingredients, spend time on complex meal preparations, and dine at expensive farm-to-table restaurants while casting those who lack such resources as less virtuous consumers. In response, our participants interpret Slow Food's cultural associations with affluent foodies and elite taste practices as a regrettable, but correctible, market distortion of the movement's authentic values and practices.

While acknowledging that market upscaling has imbued Slow Food with an elitist aura, our participants reiterate that expensive, epicurean cuisine need not be and, indeed should not be, regarded as the quintessential expressions of Slow Food:

I think one of the things is this perception that if you shop at farmers’ markets or at the co-op, it's a lot more expensive. And there is a little bit of this Slow Food bent into cooking elaborate meals, and I think some people perceive that as being elitist because it's sort of this educated way of thinking about food. I don’t think of it as being elitist because a lot of times, recipes can be super expensive to buy all the ingredients for, but they don’t have to be. I don’t think that enjoying your food should be something that is thought of as elitist…. Like, I buy what's not super expensive at the co-op and I cook pretty simply…. What I really like about Slow Food in particular is the aspect of enjoyment and that good food is for all—what good, fair, clean food means for the farm worker to the people who are consuming the food. (Erin)

Erin further counters this aspect of the elitist critique by incorporating the economic interests of farmers into her inclusive interpretation of Slow Food stakeholders. This interpretation creates a rhetorical contrast between Slow Food's foundational discourse of economic populism (emphasizing fair wages for agricultural workers) (Petrini 2001) and the elitist condemnation that higher prices are merely a means for affluent consumers to mark status distinctions.

Paula's narrative exhibits a similar authenticating logic to that expressed by Erin:

Slow Food has often come under fire for being elitist. I don’t actually think that's true…. The beginnings of Slow Food were about people eating good food, and those were not necessarily rich people. We are talking about people who might have had very little money…. When most people think about amazing Italian cuisine, they were eating very basic foods. So, the whole idea of eating good food to me doesn’t seem elitist at all…. Slow Food in the United States, yes, we do certain things that might be seen as elitist—the restaurant dinners and stuff like that. But again, you are still educating people. You are still getting more people involved. And the more people who know about local farming, sustainable farming, eating seasonally, making sure that farm workers are protected and paid properly, that spreads out. And we do projects with a variety of different populations, and we are trying to do more of that…. Slow Food does a lot of work in all its chapters to help with urban gardens or school gardens…. In the long run, our goal is that all people have access to this kind of food…. We are working toward passing that power on to more people. So, I don’t think wanting children and families in need to have high-quality food is elitist. (Paula)

When utilizing this reflexive strategy, Slow Food advocates routinely assert that cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986), rather than a lack of economic resources per se, is the primary barrier that keeps consumers from integrating Slow Food ideals and practices into their everyday lives. Christina echoes this rationale when discussing how low-income consumers could enact Slow Food practices if they had more knowledge about utilizing the fresh produce and bulk goods that often go to waste in the local food pantry where she volunteers:

Some people who are in Slow Food are foodies. However, it does not cost a lot of money to eat right. There are food pantries who throw away produce because people who come to the pantry don’t know what to do with it and they don’t take it…. Fresh produce going to waste…. No one wants it because they don’t know what to do with it. It's really unfortunate. So, people have more access than they think. There are bulk aisles at grocery stores that you can get food for less money. It is actually a lot less expensive to buy bulk rice or bulk oats or whatever else, than to buy the bagged, boxed stuff that's like creamy preprocessed. I think the real lack of resource is education, not so much money. (Christina)

While romanticizing images of a bucolic culinary past have considerable appeal to our Slow Food advocates, the idea of rekindling a premodern utopia is not that central to the reflexive strategy's authenticating function. Rather, these homages to a bygone era, when people lived close to the land and prepared food in traditional ways, symbolically link Slow Food practices to agrarian and/or rural lifestyles far removed from elite pretensions:

I did an internship through Worldwide Working on Organic Farms…. I went to Italy and I milked sheep and goats for a couple of months. And it was very rural. It was very low-tech. We milked in buckets by hand, sheep and goats, and we kind of went out with big sticks and sheepdogs and herded them…. Slow Food originated in Bra, Italy, and that was only like an hour and a half away from the farm. So, I think that's kind of how Marco [the farmer] was involved in Slow Food. He made cheese that was very well regarded, and he went to cheese festivals and stuff. But I mean the whole day was slow. Like wake up kind of late, drink your espresso, milk leisurely, walk the mount, you know. Dinner took a really long time, but that was kind of okay. And just kind of do the same things over and over again. So, we all cooked together. They also did some kind of agro-tourism. They’d have people from the city come out and we would cook with them the food we either grew or found…. That was fun. (Leslie)

The Humanistic Rebel Strategy

Our Slow Food advocates use the humanistic rebel strategy to redress the authenticity challenge posed by the elitist critique's connotation of social exclusion and the related sociological argument that consumers’ social class backgrounds structurally predetermine their taste affinities (Holt 1998). From this critical viewpoint, Slow Food advocates may not consciously intend to be elitists, but their preferences for goods that convey meanings of sustainability, locavorism, and artisanship betray a host of class advantages that distinguish them from consumers whose lives are marked by conditions of necessity (Holt 2014). While Slow Food advocates may be well intentioned (i.e., they are being “not inauthentic”), they are also complicit in a system of institutionalized class-based inequities.

To illustrate this tension, let us reassess Leslie's preceding vignette in relation to this association with social exclusion (rather than moral pretentiousness). On the one hand, working for room and board on a small, rural farm clearly diverges from conventional notions of status posturing. However, a sociological counterpoint is that Leslie—as a college-educated young adult engaging in an exploratory experience—is building a reservoir of life stories and cultural capital that can afford career and status advantages later in life (see Weinberger, Zavisca and Silva 2017). Seen in this sociological light, Leslie is enacting her class privilege by having the economic and social latitude to intern on a rustic, Italian farm before transitioning into more conventional middle-class occupational pursuits, such as attending graduate school.

As a chapter leader, Kevin has oriented his local chapter's activities toward the goal of making Slow Food a more inclusive organization that does not merely cater to the interests of middle-class consumers. When implementing these outreach projects, however, Kevin recognizes that many Slow Food practices are simply incompatible with the situational demands that lower-income consumers have to negotiate on a daily basis:

I have amazing privilege,… like being an American to a middle-aged white guy who has very marketable skills…. But I realize that that is a privilege, and this is the biggest thing for us in Slow Food to grapple with—that a single mother who has three jobs and two kids doesn’t have the luxury of deciding, “I think I would like to work less and spend more time in my garden”…. So, you have to be very careful and sensitive about it. (Kevin)

The humanistic rebel strategy takes this inclusive rationale further by suggesting that a confluence of technological and commercial forces have locked individuals into an accelerating pace of life. Consequently, experiences of social connection, spontaneity, and everyday small pleasures are sacrificed to demands for efficiency, convenience, and the seductive (and ultimately alienating) effects of social media and digital communications.

Aaron echoes this humanistic rebel mantra in his commentary on the inherent importance of eating and cooking with others:

You have the social component of Slow Food as cooking and eating together and taking time to reflect and to connect and to develop community. That's something that we lose when we have things like drive-through or microwave dinners, which aren’t to be destroyed or demonized altogether. I take advantage of these services of society. But for them to be the baseline means that we are losing what … enriches our social systems a lot more than people eating alone and interacting through screens…. So, I think food, when it's jointly cooked and eaten, serves as a very natural medium for connection and idea generation and creativity. (Aaron)

When expressing the humanistic rebel strategy, our participants often couched the communal experiences of preparing or eating food as magical moments that affirm Slow Food's class-transcendent qualities:

I ran a cheese-making class, and that was really fun because I’ve always been interested in cheese-making, just for the fun of it. There were seven or eight people there. And one of the members still is making cheese today. And it was really fun to be able to share that magic with people. That this is how this cheese actually comes into being, and it's totally doable by yourself at home. So, that's really exciting, that he got so inspired. It's fun to see somebody get really interested in something. (Amanda)

Maggie similarly interprets her self-taught Slow Food skills as a means to help people create a sense of communal togetherness and to experience new sensory pleasures and magical connections to the land:

I think of Slow Food as taking your time to respect the ingredients and preparing them from scratch and enjoying food. And that, to me, resonates. And bringing back the social aspect of eating. Like, you take time to prepare this meal, you sit down, you share it with people who care about the same things that you do. And it's also, creating another community of people who value these things whether they’re growing, or cooking, or eating; having that kind of common thread, I think is really satisfying. (Maggie)

The Perfective Strategy

The perfective strategy seeks to negate Slow Food's disauthenticating association with commercialism. This aspect of the elitist critique casts Slow Food producers and entrepreneurs as disingenuous actors who are enrolling consumers into an inauthentic market relationship (akin to a gimmick or a confidence game) to serve their own economic interests. In response, our Slow Food entrepreneurs strive to authenticate their actions by signaling that they would never compromise their Slow Food ideals for the sake of profit, such as by recounting the copious amounts of time and energy they invest into perfecting their Slow Food enterprises

In this spirit, Tom, a farm-to-table restauranteur, views his business as a way to enact his passionate commitment to producing food in a more meaningful and socially beneficial way:

When you go to a fast-food restaurant, you have no idea of who actually made that food and the process of where it came from is not known to you. The taste and flavor are mostly engineered to play off the cheap sensory sensations. So, it's fatty and salty and sweet and so, yeah, on a certain level, it might be gratifying, but it's a cheap way to do it that is less meaningful. Slow Food is like, “We’re going to do things in a way that is process oriented!” I talk about process a lot…. We [Tom and his restaurant staff] were really structured around learning, and so it was a process where we feel like we’ve excelled and learned a lot and we’ll keep pursuing that…. [With Slow Food,] you have this process where people are eating and making something and understanding where it came from and how it works. Eating is such an important part of our lives, and it can have a really important impact on our community and environment. So, the more you understand about it, hopefully you’ll make better decisions. The basic motto of Slow Food is clean, fair, and good food. I can totally get behind those values. (Tom)

Returning to Maggie, she raises pasture-fed rabbits for sale to farm-to-table restaurants and consumers. In developing her production techniques, Maggie has constantly experimented with different procedures and equipment designs. Through this long trial-and-error process, Maggie believes she has developed an innovative method that better simulates the lives her rabbits would enjoy outside of captivity:

Maggie: Daniel Salatin is the son of Joel Salatin, who is the owner of Polyface Farms, and he is the person who is raising rabbits in this system that he has devised and calls the Hare Pen system. So essentially, you still have your does in cages…. You put them in a glorified cage that you then put on grass…. I’ve copied their system exactly, and I was very unsatisfied with the results that I got. [Maggie then provides an extensive description of her alternative and labor-intensive system and how she developed it]… I don’t know why I kept doing it. But I finally have a system that is really effective…. It just was a lot of observation of the rabbits on pasture, making so many mistakes and then incorporating what I had learned.

Invoking the image of the passionate artist, Maggie distinguishes her efforts to perfect an ecologically appropriate system for raising rabbits from crass commercial and economic interests. Maggie's closing sentiment expresses her authenticating belief that such actions can make things better, rather than being driven by instrumental aims. Through storytelling, and by showing how her system works to customers who visit her farm, Maggie deploys narrative and material resources to negate disauthenticating concerns that her Slow Food affinities are merely an instrumental means to charge higher prices. Her personal investment in learning about rabbits’ natural habitats/behaviors and inventing a complex ecosystem for raising them further signals that she is not likely to compromise her Slow Food principles in the interest of commercial expediency.

Theoretical Implications

Prior research has treated authenticity as a perceptual value or quality that consumers attribute to a brand (Brown, Kozinets, and Sherry 2003; Kupfer et al. 2018), person-brand (Thomson 2006), product (Leigh, Peters, and Shelton 2006), or performance (Becker, Wiegand, and Reinartz 2019; Grayson and Martinec 2004). In contrast, we have reconceptualized authenticity as an ongoing process through which consumers and marketers negotiate a contextualized system of cultural contradictions and ambiguous classifications. We suggest that our semiotic framework can better analyze the authenticity contestations that arise in a given market or sociocultural context than conventional theories that assume authenticity perceptions operate on a continuum or selectively draw from an essential set of defining attributes.

The conceptualization of authenticity as a relative point along an authentic-to-inauthentic continuum (Dickinson 2011; Napoli, Dickinson-Delaporte, and Beverland 2016) can depict a zone of ambiguity where the authenticity or inauthenticity of a market actor is perceived as being uncertain and, thus, debatable. However, this conceptualization does not offer a means to specifically analyze the cultural meanings (and the interrelationships among them) that generate these ambiguous perceptions. Accordingly, it offers limited theoretical discrimination and managerial guidance.

For example, Napoli, Dickinson-Delaporte, and Beverland (2016) argue that quality commitment, heritage, and sincerity are the primary perceptual cues of authenticity. They then propose that brands should differentially leverage these cues depending on whether consumers perceive them as having low, moderate, or high levels of authenticity. In their normative framework, brands with low perceived authenticity should emphasize sincerity, brands with moderate perceived authenticity should emphasize quality and heritage, and brands with a high level of perceived authenticity should emphasize all three authenticity cues.

Such recommendations presume that brands falling into the lower and middle sectors of this proposed continuum have a shortfall of perceived quality commitment, sincerity, or heritage that is rectifiable through compensatory signaling. However, such contested brands are often plagued by contradictory meanings that undermine their promoted claims to authenticity (Giesler 2012; Thompson, Rindfleisch, and Arsel 2006). Furthermore, more complex, disauthenticating narratives, such as the elitist critique, can cast doubt on the very credibility of such authenticating cues when used by a contested brand or actors in a market system.

Turning to combinatory definitions, Nunes, Ordanini, and Giambastiani (2021) have offered a comprehensive theorization of authenticity (as understood from the consumer's perspective) that warrants comparison to our approach. They identify six subdimensions of authenticity (accuracy, connectedness, integrity, legitimacy, originality, and proficiency) and then trace out the relative impact of those dimensions across different market categories and on consumers’ behavioral intentions. Rather than a continuum, Nunes, Ordanini, and Giambastiani argue for a family resemblance explanation in which “a concept (authenticity, in this case) may be qualified by different subsets of its dimensions across different contexts, and not always by all of them in the same way” (p. 16).

Like a continuum, Nunes, Ordanini, and Giambastiani’s (2021) family resemblance logic is limited to the explanation that authenticity is a multidimensional construct whose subcomponents may be more or less important in a given market or consumption context. In contrast, a semiotic framework shifts attention from correlational premises (e.g., this authenticity subdimension seems more important for hedonic products than utilitarian ones) to the cultural meanings, and underlying structural contradictions, relevant to a particular judgment regarding the authenticity of a given product, brand, or market action. For example, the authentic ↔ inauthentic tension elevates the importance of authenticity's moral dimensions in ways that traverse product category distinctions, such as hedonic or utilitarian.

To illustrate, a hamburger would typically be classified as a hedonic good. Nunes, Ordanini, and Giambastiani (2021, pp. 3–4) find that judgments of “legitimacy”—which they define as “the extent to which a product or service adheres to shared norms, standards, rules, or traditions present in the market … appear to matter for utilitarian but not hedonic products.” However, if we examine this consumer choice in the context of the Slow Food market, then legitimacy becomes a far more important issue. From this standpoint, an “authentic burger” would need to exhibit fidelity to various aesthetic and moral norms—grass-fed beef, local sourcing, traditional preparation techniques, and so on—and, its perceived authenticity would be understood and legitimated through a contrast to fast-food burgers. That authenticating contrast (the fast-food burger vs. a Slow Food burger) could then become subject to the elitist critique, which, in turn, would provide motivation for Slow Food advocates to negate these disauthenticating associations.

In summary, we have argued that authenticity is culturally constructed (and contested) in a network of structural relations (rather than being a discrete set of essential properties attributed to a brand, person-brand, market performance, or market relationship). Consumers and marketers alike covet indexical authenticity (i.e., the abstract ideal of authenticity) because it can confer cultural legitimacy (Humphreys 2010), moral authority (Luedicke, Thompson, and Giesler 2009), and identity validation (Beverland and Farrelly 2010; Thompson, Rindfleisch, and Arsel 2006) all of which, can be converted into micro-celebrity status (Rokka and Canniford 2016) and a branding asset (Fournier and Eckhardt 2019; Holt 2002). However, this authenticity ideal is structurally linked to contradictory meanings and ambiguous classifications. When consumers’ or marketers’ authenticity claims are challenged by these cultural contradictions, they have pressing incentives to distinguish their actions and identities from the invoked disauthenticating associations. In the following subsection, we discuss how this authenticating goal can be enacted by negating associations that flow along the contradictory path of deception and promoting those that follow the contradictory path of redemption.

Two Managerial Paths to Authenticating a Brand

As Holt and Cameron (2010) have argued, marketing managers often find it difficult to redress brand image problems because they are unable to effectively decipher the cultural meanings contributing to those dilemmas. Our semiotic framework can help redress this managerial shortfall. It offers a tangible means for marketing managers to systematically analyze the cultural contradictions of authenticity that emerge in a given market and then to identify strategies for authenticating their brands in the face of these challenges.

As a general heuristic, we propose that marketers can be successful in authenticating their brands and/or other strategic assets when they are able to accomplish two complementary goals. The first is to leverage cultural meanings that negate the disauthenticating associations that flow along the contradictory of deception path (authentic → not authentic; see Figure 1). When consumers follow this perceptual path, they experience a glaring contradiction between a prevailing ideal of authenticity and its market manifestation in a brand or marketing practice (authentic ↔ not authentic), which then leads to an association of inauthenticity via the complementary relation of not authentic → inauthentic. In response, marketers should try to provide consumers with compelling and emotionally resonant meanings and rationales that discount the credibility, relevance, or importance of the disauthenticating associations that have gained cultural currency in their respective market.

As one illustration, Patagonia confronted a path of deception authenticity challenge soon after it began campaigning against the Trump administration's executive order to reduce the size of Utah's Bears Ears National Monument by two million acres. On December 4, 2017, Patagonia featured this message on the front page of its website: “The President Stole Your Land: In an illegal move, the president just reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. This is the largest elimination of protected land in American history.” This web page then directed consumers to various information sources and encouraged consumers to contact their elected officials and to also take the protest to social media, using the hashtag #MonumentalMistakes (see Andrews 2017).

However, defenders of the administration's policy change were quick to denigrate Patagonia's activism as a deceptive marketing ploy. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke condemned Patagonia as a dishonest “special interest” and proclaimed it was “shameful and appalling that they would blatantly lie in order to put money in their coffers.” Utah Representative Bob Bishop, then chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, also evoked the elitist critique in his tweet proclaiming that “Patagonia is Lying to You… A corporate giant hijacking our public lands debate to sell more products to wealthy elitist urban dwellers from New York to San Francisco” (quoted in Gelles [2018]).

In terms of our model, the Trump administration's response challenged the authenticity of Patagonia's mobilizing campaign by impugning its motivations, thereby reframing an ostensibly authentic (conscious capitalist) action as a disingenuous public relations stunt designed to extract more profits from elite consumers (authentic → inauthentic), which, in turn, triggers the complementary association to inauthenticity. In response, Patagonia joined as a coplaintiff with five Native American tribes and several nonprofit groups in a lawsuit aiming to halt the policy change (Gelles 2018; see also https://www.patagonia.com/stories/hey-hows-that-lawsuit-against-the-president-going/story-72248.html). Patagonia also continued to be a vocal critic of the Trump administration's environmental policies and, in a politically and ideologically related vein, donated all its tax savings from the Trump-backed corporate tax cut to environmental groups while condemning the new corporate tax rates as being irresponsible (Miller 2018). Through these responses, Patagonia signaled a deeper commitment to its conscious capitalist values and gave consumers reasons to doubt or dismiss the disauthenticating associations of greed and deception that were being cast on it. In response to Patagonia's uncompromising stance, Inc. offered the following commentary on its 2018 Company of the Year finalist:

For Patagonia and its fans, that purpose is doing whatever they can to try to save the planet. In 2018, Patagonia proved that it will not only preach that mission, it will do so with a much louder voice than most other companies. And—so far, anyway—it's only further burnished the Patagonia brand. (Blakely 2018)

Volkswagen's (VW’s) “Hello Light” advertisement, which launched its new line of electric vehicles (circa 2019), takes viewers on a journey that follows a path of redemption arc (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEvNL6oEr0U). The ad begins with a silhouetted figure entering a dark and seemingly abandoned production facility, while a news report about VW's emission scandal, or “Dieselgate,” blares in the background. In a seemingly counterproductive marketing communications move, the ad explicitly reminds its viewers of all the inauthentic associations (VW as liar, deceiver) that arose from those “dark” days. The protagonist is revealed to be a despondent engineer struggling to design a new VW model, against the musical backdrop of Simon and Garfunkel's 1960s anthem, “The Sound of Silence.” Desperate for inspiration, our engineer scours the company archives and finds his creative muse—an image of the iconic VW Van (aka the “Love Bus”).

Through the choice of song and reference to this totem of the 1960s counterculture, the ad recalls VW's countercultural legacy as an authentic symbol of antimaterialist values and a rebuke to status consciousness and marketing hype (Holt 2004). The ad's message is that VW, despite having lost its way, still possesses a latent essential “goodness” that is “not inauthentic.” As “The Sound of Silence” reaches its crescendo, lights go on, puncturing the darkness. We observe the production facility come to life and give metaphorical rebirth to the VW brand in the form of an electric van (which also places “The Sound of Silence” on a different, ecofriendly cultural register). Thus, the ad's narrative follows the redemptive path of “inauthentic” (VW's Dieselgate) to “not inauthentic” (VW's 1960's countercultural heyday) to “authentic” (signifying that VW has rekindled its socially conscious roots).

Our discussion of the three authenticating strategies used by Slow Food consumers and entrepreneurs has emphasized their function as a defensive means to disavow or negate the disauthenticating associations that flow along the contradictory of deception path. However, these same strategies also promote affirmative meanings and associations that operate along the contradictory of redemption path. For example, the perfective strategy does more than negate the disauthenticating association with commercialism. It also magnifies authenticating differences to fast food or industrialized food production and thereby encourages consumers to interpret Slow Food enterprises in a manner compatible with the contradictory of redemption path (even though they may be aware of some disauthenticating associations). This redemptive associative chain takes the following form: Slow Food entrepreneurs are suspected to be “inauthentic” due to their commercial motivations → Slow Food entrepreneurs are seen as being “not inauthentic” because their deep commitment to artisan ideals and noncommercial values differentiates them from conventional fast-food establishments and industrialized modes of commercial food production → the signification of “not inauthentic” supports a broader conclusion that the Slow Food entrepreneur is an authentic actor.

Implications for Managers of Conscious Capitalist Brands

Given their shared ideological affinities, the authenticating strategies used by Slow Food advocates should also have a high degree of applicability to brands espousing conscious capitalist goals and ideals. Of the three authenticating strategies, we find numerous examples of conscious capitalist brands that have enacted some version of the perfective strategy, which aims to negate associations with commercial opportunism and foster interpretations compatible with the contradictory of redemption path. While less commonplace, we can also find branding campaigns that align with the reflexive and humanistic rebel strategies. In the following discussion, we use these various exemplars to illustrate how these authenticating strategies can be implemented by conscious capitalist brands and the authenticity contradictions they potentially redress.