The Rise of Narrative Consumption: How Feminist Brands Build Market Legitimacy Through Storyworld Construction

Xiner Wang

Simen Owen Academic Proceedings Series, 2026, vol. 6, 146-154

Abstract: Narrative consumption has evolved into a dominant consumption pattern in the contemporary market, where feminist brands are increasingly adopting storyworld construction as a key approach to shape unique brand identities and pursue market legitimacy. This study focuses on exploring how feminist brands build integrated and extensible storyworlds across product design, advertising communication and social media interaction to gain consumer trust and recognition, while systematically examining the narrative strategies they adopt in the construction process and the authenticity dilemmas encountered in the course of marketization. A mixed-methods approach combining qualitative case analysis and quantitative empirical testing is applied to analyze the storyworld building practices of typical feminist brands. The research results show that thematic coherence, multi-channel integration and emotional authenticity in storyworld construction can effectively boost the market legitimacy of feminist brands. However, these brands often face the inherent contradictions between commercialization and feminist value expression, as well as the practical problem of cross-platform narrative disconnection, which directly damage the authenticity of brand storyworlds and further reduce consumer trust and recognition. This study enriches the theoretical research on narrative consumption and feminist brand marketing, provides practical operational insights for feminist brands to balance value expression and commercial operation in storyworld construction, and offers a new research perspective for understanding the interactive relationship between brand narrative and market legitimacy in the context of gender equality.

Keywords: narrative consumption; feminist brands; storyworld construction; market legitimacy; brand narrative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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