Luxury fashion brand image building: The role of store design in Bally and Tod’s Japan

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to reveal how store design influences luxury brand image building in a competitive market through the case study of two luxury fashion brands - Bally and Tod’s. Design/methodology/approach - Quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (interview) approaches are both utilized in this research study. The authors interviewed brand managers of Bally and Tod’s Japan and then conducted questionnaires to 57 consumers and six brand managers. Correspondence analysis, multidimensional analysis, and rough set theory were utilized to analyze the data obtained from questionnaires in order to draw the positioning maps of brand image and store image, calculate the distance of images between managers and consumers and derive and compare inference structure. Findings - The “Brand Dimensions Scales” created by Aaker (1997) can enable to measure luxury brand and store image in a scientific way. The results clarify that there is a big gap between consumers’ and managers’ cognition; the architect who designs the building could be a efficient way of advertising a luxury brand and its building to the public; and location and store atmosphere should influence luxury brand image building through non-verbal communication. Originality/value - This research study on luxury brand image building provides a way to measure brand image and assesses the impact change in brand image as well as its stores.