Hospitality Brands Employing Brand Identity through Instagram

Traditionally, branding has always been used as differentiator by companies who strategically position their products or services by associating unique attributes to them. This enables brands to concur desired associations that they intend to the consumers when they interact with them. Hospitality is emerging as one of the leaders within the service sector and are recognizing the significance of having a distinct identity that resonates with their immediate and long-term goals. Today, social media purveys brands with tools that expand the extent of relationships between a brand and a consumer, from simply a consumer-service communication dynamic towards drawing emotional associations between guests and the hotel. On that note, this study seeks to observe how brand identity is employed on Instagram in a heavily saturated market such as the hospitality sector, by centring the study on CitizenM. CitizenM positions itself as a disrupter in the hospitality sector, which is saturated with traditional hotels, and sets forth a persona that is young, bold and one-of-a-kind. Using Kapferer's Brand Identity Prism as the grounding framework, the study implements thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns to learn more about the research topic, conducted over two distinct datasets- expert interviews, conducted with employees within the Brand Team at the company, and 150 Instagram reels, sourced from the official Instagram page of CitizenM. The study primarily employed three components from Kapferer's prism: 'personality', 'culture', 'self-image'- to formulate guiding sub-questions to answer the main research question while embedding the remaining three components within the conceptualization of the categories of sub-questions themselves. Subsequently, five Major themes appeared upon conducting thematic analysis, namely: 'Brand Communication Strategy', 'Brand Personality', 'Culture and Values rooted in identity', 'Instagram Affordances for brand communications', and 'Intended Consumer Mindset'. Furthermore, the research contributes to scientific research within the fields of branding, brand identity, social media communication, and hospitality. Simultaneously, providing significant observations pertinent for hospitality brands seeking to establish authentic and experiential identities by leveraging the affordances of Instagram.