Authenticity in Discursive Practices of the Online Market for Second-Hand Luxury Clothing

• Published in: Qualitative report Vol. 24; no. 12; pp. 3125 - 3149
• Main Authors: Zampier, Ronan L, Farias, Rita de Cássia P, Pinto, Marcelo R
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Fort Lauderdale The Qualitative Report 01-12-2019
• Subjects: Authenticity; Consumers; Consumption; Critical theory; Discourse analysis; Discursive practices; Environment; Internet; Literary Styles; Luxuries; Marketing; Markets; Research Methodology; Researchers; Retail stores; Social Mobility; Sociocultural factors; Sociocultural Patterns; Used goods; Brazil
• ISSN: 1052-0147; 2160-3715

Authenticity is a particularly sensitive and salient issue in the online market for second-hand luxury clothing, and it is still little explored in the field of consumption studies. In this study we sought to analyze how authenticity is represented in discursive practices of the Brazilian online market for secondhand luxury clothing. The corpus of the work consisted of data collected through interviews in five stores of the Brazilian online market of luxury second-hand clothing. The data were analyzed using the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), proposed by Fairclough (1992), articulated to the sociocultural perspective of consumption. From the discursive categories Subject, Interdiscursivity, Intertextuality, Transitivity System, and Appraisal System, we perceived that the process of legitimizing the stores and the representations of authenticity are overlapped and traversed significantly by historical, social, and cultural aspects. We conclude that insofar as it becomes difficult to ensure objective authenticity, an interpretative dimension emerges, elaborated from the influence of sociocultural factors that underlie the judgment on what is authentic luxury, which in the scenario investigated are indexes of expression of high luxury. In this case, the origins and trajectories that are recognized as references of elite distinction for Brazilian consumers are important elements for the interpretation of authenticity.