Purpose
This paper aims to conceptualise and characterise brand systems and outline propositions and research avenues to advance the systems’ view of branding.
Design/methodology/approach
A ...conceptual synthesis approach is adopted to integrate the extant branding research perspectives. The conceptual framework is grounded in the theoretical foundation of marketing systems theory.
Findings
The conceptual framework delineates brand inputs, throughputs, outcomes and feedback effects within a brand system. It configures the complexity and dynamics of brand value formation among brand actors within the branding environment.
Research limitations/implications
This paper contributes to systems thinking in branding and brand value co-creation research. It extends marketing systems theory into the branding context and provides research directions for exploring the structural and functional configurations, cause–consequence processes and outcome concerns of brand value formation.
Practical implications
This conceptual framework informs brand development, management and regulation at a macro level. Managers can apply the brand system concept to identify and manage conflicting expectations of brand actors and alleviate adverse brand outcomes such as negative brand externalities, enhancing overall brand system health and societal value.
Originality/value
This research expands the scope of brand actor agency and identifies the likelihood of disproportionate brand outcomes. It provides methodological guidelines for analysis and intervention in brand systems.
This paper presents Systematic Theory Mapping (STM), a comprehensive and systematic method, as the first step toward defining and dealing with complex and wicked problems. Social systems exhibit a ...messy, multifaceted, and multi-level composite of problems characterized by causal complexities and non-linear interactions of numerous contributing variables. Exploring such a wicked composite of problems for causal explanations and theory building through reductionist empiricism is unrealistic, expensive, and futile. Systems thinking is required to understand the configurations driving wicked problems and navigate their causal complexities. We construed brand externalities as a wicked problem and provided an illustrative example for STM. A systematic narrative review is used to amalgamate diverse stakeholder perspectives and capture the structures and processes that generate brand externalities. System dynamics, employing a causal loop diagram, is used to organize the findings and develop a causal theory of brand externalities. The proposed method can help scholars, managers, and policymakers better define complex managerial and social problems and identify the likely consequences of their actions.
Brand Externalities: A Taxonomy Padela, Shoaib M. Farooq; Wooliscroft, Ben; Ganglmair-Wooliscroft, Alexandra
Journal of macromarketing,
06/2021, Letnik:
41, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Brands are ubiquitous and adorn contemporary marketing systems. Modern branding practices spawn contradictory social mechanisms, value co-creation and value co-destruction. This paper considers the ...societal implications, including personal, psychological, social, ecological, and economic consequences of branding. It posits brand externalities as meaning-led discrepancies and symbolic spill-overs igniting mechanisms detrimental to the integrity of the social system. Brand externalities accompany the assortment of brands in contemporary marketing systems. We propose a taxonomy of brand externalities and elucidate societal consequences of branding upon brand exchange actors themselves, their immediate others, future others and general others. This stakeholder orientation sets a future research agenda and calls for redefining branding from the system’s perspective.
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