Narrating Value: Brand Identity Construction in the Luxury Watch Market

Abstract

The luxury watch market is a fertile ground for investigating the discursive practices which lead to the construction of corporate brand identity and reputation. Far from being just commodities, luxury watches combine the tangibility of timekeeping devices with the intangibility of concepts like heritage, excellence and authenticity.

This article investigates the discursive construction of corporate identity through the ‘About Us’ sections of the websites of the ten leading European luxury jewellery groups, with a specific focus on luxury watch manufacturers. We built a corpus consisting of the main actors in the luxury watch industry, and we processed the data using software-based statistical analysis to unveil linguistic and thematic patterns. This quantitative approach is integrated with Multimodal Discourse Analysis which qualitatively examines how verbal and non-verbal elements work together to convey meaning.

The study highlights how, and to what extent, the ‘About Us’ sections of those companies’ websites contribute to shaping and reinforcing narratives of tradition, quality and exclusivity. The investigation reveals how the verbal texts in the corpus craft a sense of value and uniqueness, while their interplay with non-verbal texts corroborates the objective of providing prospective customers with a solid, consistent narrative of luxury. This latter positions luxury not just as a commodity to be owned, but as value that one can embody or identify oneself in.