Emotive Rhetoric as Strategic Intent: Sentiment Analysis of LVMH and Kering’s Environmental Reporting
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Luxury conglomerates LVMH and Kering have recently gained public attention due to their aggressive sustainability campaigns – which include environmental reporting. This thesis suggests that these companies’ signaling power as industry leaders, their operational complexity, and their historic rivalry make their environmental reports worth studying. Using sentiment analysis to investigate LVMH and Kering’s annual environmental reports from 2013 to 2018, what emotions can we identify in these documents’ language and how has their use changed throughout the years? Guiding this project is the desire to determine why these companies are interested in communicating their environmental performance and in using reports. To that end, I perform lexicon-based sentiment analysis using the VADER tool and the NRC Sentiment and Emotion Lexicons. This novel approach to content analysis reveals that when LVMH and Kering engage in emotive rhetoric, they predominantly evoke ‘positive’ feelings, ‘trust,’ ‘anticipation,’ and ‘joy.’ By contrast, sentiments with negative connotations are the least evoked. This research also finds both companies’ language to be extremely similar throughout the six-year period. Based on a prior synthesis of literature on environmental reporting and an analysis of luxury strategy, this thesis proposes that LVMH and Kering evoke such sentiments to assert their proactivity working against environmental threats. In turn, this emotive rhetoric reassures shareholders, whose support is essential to their long-term survival. Further, such emotive rhetoric contributes to these companies’ reputations. This is important for luxury companies like LVMH and Kering, whose operational longevity and cultural significance rest upon long-term planning. As such, LVMH and Kering’s emotive rhetoric aligns with their strategic intent. This thesis concludes by encouraging future research on rhetoric and other subtle strategic actions taken by luxury fashion companies, especially in the context of environmental threats. In addition, it calls attention to sentiment analysis as an innovative research method in fashion.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 2020 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Chang Foxon, Daniela |
|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Hoyos, Héctor |
Subjects
| Subject | Science Technology and Society |
|---|---|
| Subject | fashion |
| Subject | sustainability |
| Subject | sentiment analysis |
| Subject | strategic intent |
| Subject | luxury |
| Subject | strategy |
| Subject | LVMH |
| Subject | Kering |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-SA).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Chang Foxon, Daniela. (2020). Emotive Rhetoric as Strategic Intent: Sentiment Analysis of LVMH and Kering’s Environmental Reporting. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/dh491pp9418
Collection
Stanford University, Program in Science, Technology and Society, Honors Theses
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- Contact
- danichfw@stanford.edu
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