As valuable assets of corporations, governments and not-for-profit organizations, brands have attracted considerable research attention. We know a lot about how brands create knowledge in their ...target consumers’ minds, which leads to an attitude towards or relationship with the brand that translates into a number of favorable outcomes. The resultant brand equity is often associated with improved performance of the organization in reaching its objectives such as increasing market value. We know less about the dynamic nature of brand equity and, in particular, how it may interact with turbulence in the external environment in which the brand competes, both positively and negatively. We examine three key dimensions of brand equity—brands’ access to their target markets, perceived differentiation, and level of brand engagement with their target consumers—that influence the effect environmental turbulence has on diminishing equity or providing future opportunities for brand equity growth. Borrowing from the strategy literature, we suggest ways in which agile and resilient firms can use brand equity to resist environmental turbulence, recover from any damage that may result from it, and reinvent themselves to leverage opportunities created by a radically altered external environment. We close with a set of propositions intended to guide managers in anticipating and responding to environmental turbulence and inform and shape future research in this area.
Purpose
By outlining the evolution of brand management research over the past 25 years, as reported in the Journal of Product and Brand Management (JPBM), this paper aims to analyze the changes in ...the way branding has been approached in research, highlight the current challenges the discipline faces and suggest future research avenues that will hopefully further enrich brand management knowledge.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper includes internal historical literature review and commentary.
Findings
After a thorough analysis of the journal’s content, the contribution that the JPBM has made in the development of brand management knowledge over the past 25 years is highlighted. Eight major shifts in brand management research and thought, and three overarching difficulties and challenges, are identified.
Research limitations/implications
By solely focusing on the contributions published in the journal, by no means this review is exhaustive and includes all the contributions to the discipline. Its contribution is limited to the analysis of the work, and the evolution of brand management thinking, recorded in the JPBM.
Originality/value
The paper highlights the evolution of brand management thought and presents imperatives and challenges to guide future research in brand management.
Abstract
To advance understanding of how well different types of brand relationships drive customer brand loyalty and to help companies improve the effectiveness of their relationship-building ...investments, this article conducts a meta-analysis of the link between five consumer-brand relationship constructs and customer brand loyalty. The analysis of 588 elasticities from 290 studies reported in 255 publications over 24 years (n = 348,541 across 46 countries) reveals that the aggregate brand relationship elasticity is .439. More importantly, results demonstrate under what conditions various types of brand relationships increase loyalty. For example, while elasticities are generally highest for love-based and attachment-based brand relationships, the positive influence of brand relationships on customer brand loyalty is stronger in more recent (vs. earlier) years, for nonstatus (vs. status) and publicly (vs. privately) consumed brands, and for estimates using attitudinal (vs. behavioral) customer brand loyalty. Overall, the results suggest that brand relationship elasticities vary considerably across brand, loyalty, time, and consumer characteristics. Drawing on these findings, the current research advances implications for managers and scholars and provide avenues for future research.
The academic research on branding of consumer products and services is increasingly considering the degree of connectedness between consumers and brands as a key issue of investigation. The ...literature in this area investigates the nature and the strength of the relationship that consumers develop with brands, as well as the trend of joining brand tribes or brand communities in order to demonstrate and share with others their feelings towards and preference to brands. However, the impact of the overall perceptions of the brands in the form of its reputation and brand tribalism on brand relationships is so far unexplored in the existing literature. Using data collected from 912 respondents, this paper explores the importance of the long term brand reputation and brand tribalism on the strength of brand relationships. The findings suggest that brand tribalism is a better predictor of the strength of brand relationships than the long term brand reputation itself.
Brand community engagement is evolving as a prominent relationship marketing variable that yields promising outcomes for the firms. Drawing upon the relevant premises of social exchange theory, this ...paper proposes a theoretical model portraying the role of online brand community based benefits (experience based and self-esteem based) and the community relationship investment in predicting the levels of brand community engagement.
Data collected through a survey questionnaire technique from 925 members of the firm created online brand communities was employed to test the measurement and structural theory using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling respectively. The empirical results reveal that the customers’ experiential and self-esteem based benefits drive their brand community engagement. The perceived community relationship investment of the members also drives their brand community engagement positively. The sequential structural model also supported a positive impact exerted by brand community engagement on brand community commitment and brand loyalty. Additionally, it is observed that the focal brand ownership moderates the effect of community benefits and community relationship investment on brand community engagement.
This study contributes to the nascent academic research on online brand communities and to the existing understanding of the brand community managers in managing customer engagement in online brand communities, thereby of profound theoretical and managerial relevance.
Brands are a fait accompli: they represent a mountain range of evidence in search of a theory. They are much exploited, but little explored. In this book, Martin Kornberger sets out to rectify the ...ratio between exploiting and exploring through sketching out a theory of the Brand Society. Most attempts to explain the role of brands focus on brands either as marketing and management tools (business perspective) or a symptoms of consumerism (sociological perspective). Brand Society combines these perspectives to show how brands have the power to transform both the organizations that develop them and the lifestyles of the individuals who consume them. This holistic approach shows how brands function as a medium between producers and consumers in a way that is rapidly transforming our economy and society. That's the bottom line of the Brand Society: brands are a new way of organizing production and managing consumption. Using an array of practical case studies from a diverse set of organizations, this book provides a fascinating account of the way in which brands influence the lives of individuals and the organizations they work in.
Purpose
– This paper aims to look into contemporary thinking within the brand equity paradigm, with a view to establishing avenues for further research on the drivers of brand equity formation, ...enabling a more in-depth understanding of the antecedents of brand equity and its determinants, as well as the development of an improved instrument to measure brand equity. The brand equity paradigm and its importance for marketing theory have been in the research focus for more than two decades. There is no agreement in the literature how to develop a unique measure of brand equity, neither what are the sources, drivers or determinants.
Design/methodology/approach
– The authors develop the relating conceptual study through the differentiation and integration as specific conceptual goals. The authors present a taxonomic framework of brand equity grounded on a synthesis of contemporary approaches to the theme.
Findings
– The authors identify gaps in the brand equity literature. The analysis and development of the conceptual study in this paper shall serve as beacons for future research and provide valuable theoretical insights on the determinants of brand equity formation and the development of better brand equity measurement tools.
Originality/value
– The authors synthesized contemporary approaches in the field, identified research gaps and proposed open questions that should be tackled, as well as provided avenues for future research. The authors argue that creation of a unifying brand equity theory should be based on three pillars: stakeholder value, marketing assets and brand financial performance outputs.
This research investigates the intermediate mechanism that translates brand communities into brand relationships. Using a sample of online brand communities from China, the study finds that consumer ...brand attachment plays a full mediating role between brand community commitment and brand commitment and exerts partial mediation between brand identification and brand commitment. Perceived community–brand similarity moderates both brand community identification's effect on brand identification and brand community commitment's effect on brand attachment. The findings contribute to the brand literature and provide implications for brand community management.
► We investigate how brand communities generate brand relationships. ► Consumer brand attachment plays a mediating role. ► Perceived community Cbrand similarity plays a moderating role.
The present paper proposes a customer–brand relationships model and empirically tests the following: (1) brand–self distance and brand prominence as representing customers' attachment–aversion ...relationships (AA Relationships) with a brand, (2) key distinguishing differences between the AA Relationships measure and other alternative relationship measures (i.e., brand attachment, emotional valence and brand attitude strength) based on a set of dependent variables, (3) three key determinants of the AA Relationships and the underlying process between the AA Relationships and behavioral intentions and actual brand behaviors, and (4) customer age as moderating the customer–brand relationships specified in the nomological model of the AA Relationships. The results offer strong support for the unique and important contribution of the AA Relationships model as representing consumers' relationship valence with a brand and its salience.
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