Brand Fortitude in Moments of Consumption: Lessons from American Girl

In this work we study patterns of consumer sentiment and practice that energized the American Girl brand beyond its retail setting and imbricated it in an emplacement process of homebuilding. We describe the property that allowed the brand to resist dilution of its essence and gradually assume greater influence within the householdas brand fortitude. Through objects bearing its name, the brand becomes both an affecting presence that consumers use to build life-worlds and a repository of the energy generated in that building. Brand fortitude is a more nuanced and sociological construct than brand attachment and, although the two share a similar hedonic, ideological, and functional charge, the materiality of the object experience is far more central to fortitude.