Brand Pathologies

Abstract

The Twilight media brand is a global consumption phenomenon which speaks to female consumers who enter into fantastic and corporeal relationships with its market manifestations (books, films, merchandising, and consumption communities). Twilight's brand narrative reifies the psychological power and socio-cultural allure of the ‘monstrous' vampire myth, and enables a spectrum of relational exposure from ‘Twi-hard' (devoted Twilight fan) fandom to addictive and obsessive, compulsive, and transgressive behaviors. The consumer's relational exposure to this brand is the subject of this study. The authors discuss the tensions and paradoxes which underpin female consumption of this powerful brand. They also demonstrate disturbing dimensions to the construction of consumer-brand relationships (Fournier, 1998) which impact on not only the imaginative life but the physical lives of the Twilight fans. In so doing they extend current thinking on the spectrum of fan behaviors, and comment on ideological dimensions to the construction of fan-brand relationship.