Consistently #TeamNatural: How Natural Hair Brands Intersect Natural Hair, Black Culture, and Community-Building Using Social Media
Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Black natural hair brands are an important aspect of the online natural hair community and have a strong presence in the lives of black women.Therefore, it is critical to better understand the way that black natural hair brands market themselves to their consumers on social media once their reach has expanded beyond their core target audience, and they have become mainstream.While black women often reject Eurocentric beauty ideals today, there is a long history of colorism and texturism that still presents itself in the way that beauty is presented by companies, including black natural hair brands.A grounded theory approach along with open and axial coding allowed data collection that encouraged the formation of recurring patterns and concepts.Based on the findings, this analysis argues that black natural hair brands use Twitter to validate natural hair, bond with blackness, and promote their products and the brand.Interwoven in these three themes are the presence of a reliance on black cultural references, the use of hashtags, and the use of images in order to further connect with consumers and enjoy the affordances of social media.Transitioning from pre-mainstream to post-mainstream, brands expanded on their marketing tactics mainly through the use of influencers.Even after becoming mainstream, the black natural hair brands consistently present beauty in a way that rejects Eurocentric beauty ideals and instead highlights the variance of black women's hairtypes and complexions.
Author: Ramia Mitchell
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Gender equality
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3140791772