Chapter 2: Literature Review In this chapter, the concept of authenticity will be discussed and analyzed as a general construct and in the context of branding and marketing, as well as authentic leadership traits attributed to individuals , along with a brief overview of social media networks and the authentic behavior of their users online. Since many artists today act as brands and reveal detailed information about themselves as they interact with their followers through social networks, studying the effects of such direct communication to fans on authenticity can be useful to artists, management and record labels, as it threatens established patterns of artist identity creation. Authenticity The phenomenon of authenticity has been examined by investigating the attributes of authenticity (Beverland, 2005a; Leigh et al., 2006), the forms of authenticity (Beverland, Lindgreen and Vink, 2008), the influence of personal goals on authentication (Beverland and Farrelly, 2009), hyper-authenticity in television viewing (Rose and Wood, 2005), authenticity cues (Grayson and Martinec, 2004), enacted authenticity in the tourism and leisure sector ( Chhabra, 2005, Goulding, 2000, Goulding, 2001, MacCannell, 1973 and Wang, 1999) and negotiation and commodification of authenticity (Cohen, 1988). In business research, the construct of authenticity has been used in different ways to imply different meanings, commonly referring to the genuineness or originality of something and often associated with concepts such as being natural or honest (Kennick, 1985; Bene, 2003; Boyle, 2003). Authenticity is often constructed at a personal or social level (Grayson and Martinec, 2004; Leigh et al., 2006) and tends to be experienced differently, as individuals (Sheldon, ... at the center of the article. .. itively evaluate brand extensions when they measure similarities between the parent brand category and the extension category (Aaker and Keller 1990; Boush and Loken 1991; Dawar 1996; Herr, Farquhar, and Fazio 1996) and, given that artists also are considered authentic, if they uphold the traditions of their musical genres (Peterson, 1997; McLeod, 2006), it is argued that fans perceive artists as brand extensions of their genre and therefore, the conceptual definition of Brand Extension Authenticity (BAE) is adopted together with the BEA inventory developed for the purposes of this research. Likewise, artists represent the driving force and inspiration within their respective communities of followers (REF????, ????), yes. argues that authentic leadership concepts and scales could be applied as a measurement device for the purpose of evaluating the authenticity of artists.