Internal brand identification as metamorphic glue in the internal branding process within a retailer network

Abstract

The growth of collaborative independent retail networks (CIRN’s) has been a significant response by independents to the growing power of retailer multiples. These networks vary in nature and structure, but share a common objective of improved competitiveness through more effective buying, pooled marketing and/or national brand recognition. At a minimum, these networks have enabled independent retailers to achieve a relative degree of competitive parity with multiples, through participation in strategic brand building. Consequently, there is a need for a greater understanding of key issues relating to building independent store brands through collaborative networks. This research aims to better understand the internal branding process within CIRNs, a relatively unexplored area of both the corporate branding, retail and organisational studies literatures. It focuses on one antecedent of internal brand commitment, namely brand identity, interpreted as the metamorphic glue in the internal branding process, using a multiple case methodology. Findings indicated a perception of shared values, shared goals, common branding challenges and strategic fit with the network brand that was key to the level of internal brand identification, but it was the level of social identification among owner-managers that provided fertile ground for internal brand commitment to develop.     

店铺自我认同概念界定与测量的探索性研究

商业集聚内的许多小店铺以自己的经营理念来组织备货,将店铺信息传递给消费者,在这一经营过程中,零售商店铺自我认同起着重要作用。但是,店铺自我认同的概念和测量问题几乎还没有学者研究。文章借鉴品牌自我认同的概念,将店铺作为一种品牌,界定了店铺自我认同的概念,明晰了店铺自我认同和店铺印象的关系,并对店铺自我认同这一构念进行了初步的测量。     

No Logo? No Way. Branding in the Non-Profit Sector.

Ten thousand new organisations are joining the charity sector each year (Hankinson 2000). One of the ways in which charities are responding to this increased competition is to adopt commercial branding techniques (Tapp 1996; Ritchie, Swami et al. 1998). It has been suggested that brand orientation can help to raise awareness amongst target audiences (Hankinson 2000), build loyalty within donor and supporter groups (Ritchie, Swami et al. 1998) and facilitate donor choice (Hankinson 2000). This paper investigates what is understood by the term brand, what constitutes a brand in the charity environment and what organisational objectives a brand strategy seeks to achieve. It also explores the role played by values in developing charity brands. The research is primarily exploratory in nature, drawing on existing branding theory. The findings of the research are reviewed within the context of for-profit and not-for-profit branding literature. Recommendations for further research are also made.     

Retail stores as brands: performances,theatre and space

The scholars of Consumer Culture Theory studies as well as practitioners have recognised the potential power of spatial design in stores in constructing and communicating retail brands. Retail space and the aesthetic structuring of a range of expressive artefacts have become the stage on which shop attendants perform. This paper focuses on how management and shop attendants of Dutch menswear fashion house Oger communicate and construct the Oger brand, with a special focus on the spatial settings of the retail store. This study shows how the management carefully combines elements generally found in Italian ateliers, English gentlemen's clubs and boardrooms. The symbolic message behind the spatial design of the Oger flagship store is that of human quest for wealth and fame removed from the everyday life. In addition to this earlier observed interplay between design, display and consumption processes, this study indicates the important role of shop attendants in constructing and communicating retail brands. By forging links with organisation studies, we show how retail management carefully designed, managed and orchestrated retail space, objects and shop attendants’ roles to construct and communicate the Oger brand. The selling of products through performances in designed theatres connects organisation and economic and aesthetic realms. Finally, the paper introduces “internal design proxemics” as an extra analytical concept of spatial settings.     

Exploring professional human brand identity through cultural and social capital: a typology of film director identities

ABSTRACT

Our research focuses on film director human brands. It addresses the issue of human brand identity construction through the social valuation of identity attributes linked to cultural capital. Based on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural and social capital, we examine the identity attributes on which human brand identities are built through the acquisition of legitimacy. We conduct a qualitative study combining three context levels of analysis (external, internal and individual). Our results reveal the existence of four human brand identity types (i.e. chameleon conformist, niche archetypecast, mass archetypecast, cultural influencer), thus enriching and extending previous research. Each identity type is characterised by a set of culturally valued identity attributes, associated with legitimacies – specific, bourgeois, popular and institutional – bestowed by human brand constituencies.     

Celling The Concept: A Study of Managerial Brand Mindsharing of A Distributed Biobanking Research Infrastructure

This interview study investigates how managers/associates of a failed distributed large-scale Research Infrastructures perceived their brand and the role mindsharing played in light of the organisation’s ultimate failure. Specifically, the study looks at BioBanking and Molecular Resource Infrastructure in Sweden (BBMRI.se), an organisation that involved collaboration between several medical and technical universities and sought to harmonise biobanking in Sweden. The aim was to discern the respondents’ degree of mindsharing in regards to their perception of the organisational brand. The four stages the branding process investigated were: Brand Strategic Analysis, Brand Identity, Brand Operationalising, and Post-Implementation Reflections. The results indicated that the mindsharing was present at the initial two stages, but dissipated throughout the ensuing two final stages, resulting in a fragmented brand perception, thereby forgoing the ability of generating a “pull-effect” for the BBMRI.se brand. The study’s implication is for branding to account more for social and individual motivations and less for instrumental motivations, e.g. mission statements.     

Cause-Brand Community: Toward Consumer Citizenship

Brand communities have been proven to be successful with commercial brands. However, a review of the literature indicated that brand community has not been studied in charity organizations. To shed light on this issue, a qualitative research was conducted among stakeholders of an internationally well-known charity organization using three different techniques: in-depth interviews, netnography, and nonparticipant observation at the charity’s brandfest. The results suggest that cause-brand communities exist, sharing the same elements of commercial-brand communities, but the two have some unique characteristics, such as the existence of different stakeholders and small communities that demonstrate an extreme commitment, the promotion of consumer citizenship among them, and the lack of oppositional brand loyalty. A cause-brand community has important managerial implications as it helps build the charity’s brand equity; at the same time, a well-known brand supports the construction of the brand community.     

‘We’ are more likely to endorse than ‘I’: the effects of self-construal and brand symbolism on consumers’ online brand endorsements

Recent research increasingly highlights that consumers engage in online brand endorsements (e.g. Facebook likes) to signal their identity, but has failed to explain why different consumers use this type of signaling to differing degrees. This paper addresses this gap by looking at a culturally constructed individual difference variable, namely self-construal. Self-construal, which can be independent or interdependent, refers to the extent that people define themselves in terms of the relations they have with others. In four studies, this research shows that consumers’ self-construal is related to their intention to endorse brands online. In particular, high levels of interdependent self-construal positively affect consumers’ intention to endorse brands online (Studies 1A & 1B). This effect is mediated by an increased perception of brands’ symbolic value (Study 2). Moreover, this positivity bias toward symbolic brand cues is conditional upon consumers’ brand attitude (Study 3). These findings demonstrate that consumers’ identity plays a central role in their brand perception and brand-related social media use.     

Leadership marketing: an exploratory study

In an era when collaboration is the key to business prosperity, the ability to develop one truly coherent and agile brand lived by its employees and delivered to external stakeholders has become extremely challenging. Unity between the internal brand and a company’s external image, when change is the only constant, has almost ceased to exist. The marketing function is frequently underemphasised at board level and its role is often devalued in leading organisational change. This paper concerns how marketing can partner with organisational leadership for a mutually beneficial exchange of skills and capabilities to be able to reinvent organisations rapidly enough to cope with shifts in the external business environment and create a sustainable future for the business. This paper explores the concept of “leadership marketing” from an interpretivist perspective which challenges the conventional view of marketing and leadership as two separate fields and offers a holistic approach for business management and brand alignment.     

品牌形象综合传播模型研讨

品牌识别与品牌形象是品牌的两个侧面,品牌识别由品牌商标、语言、符号等组成,传达品牌价值、利益和个性,品牌形象则是存在于消费者心智中的主观感知,是消费者对品牌的认知、评价和态度的综合。因此,品牌识别与品牌形象是品牌的两个侧面。文章对品牌识别和品牌形象的概念进行了理清之后,在品牌识别过程模型基础上,将可控的品牌关系取代传播环境作为品牌形象综合传播过程的外生变量,完成对Kapferer和Coop提出的传播模型的修正。修正模型存在以下启示:对品牌裂缝的属性认知更加清晰;为进一步研究品牌裂缝的影响因子提供了方向;为缩小甚至消除品牌裂缝,提升品牌忠诚度提供了解决思路。     

The effect of activity identity fusion on negative consumer behavior

Negative consumer behavior is an important research topic as it explores consumer behaviors that threaten a brand's image and financial stability. However, prior research offers conflicting findings on whether a strong consumer‐brand relationship hurts or protects a brand after a market disruption or a brand transgression. To provide clarity on this issue, this work argues that disrupting the consumer‐activity relationship motivates consumers to reaffirm and protect their identity, thereby leading to negative consumer behavior. The data reveal that, after a brand‐initiated market disruption, consumers with high activity identity fusion are more likely to spread negative word‐of‐mouth, boycott the brand, and avoid repurchasing the brand in the future. Moreover, the data suggest that high brand identity fusion protects the brand during market disruptions; therefore, prior conflicting results may be due to the fact that the consumer‐activity relationship was not accounted for. Theoretically, this work establishes that consumers' relationship with their consumption activities has significant impacts on consumer behavior. Brand managers and marketers are urged to develop strategies that focus on strengthening the consumer‐brand relationship and not the consumer‐activity relationship.     

Job motivation and satisfaction: Unpacking the key factors for charity shop managers

This paper explores the role of job characteristics and communication in relation to job motivation and satisfaction amongst UK charity shop managers. Analysis is based on 22 interviews with shop managers and a nationwide survey of 826 charity shop managers. In exploring job characteristics we find that managers exhibit low levels of satisfaction with factors such as pay, job status and working conditions. However, in exploring communication we find a form of ‘altruism payoff’ whereby managers’ dissatisfaction is ameliorated by the fulfilment gained from interpersonal relationships with other staff members and the knowledge that their efforts are benefiting a charitable cause. In closing we draw out the policy implications of the study for charity retail organisations and suggest directions for further research.     

Political branding: sense of identity or identity crisis? An investigation of the transfer potential of the brand identity prism to the UK Conservative Party

Abstract

Brands are strategic assets and key to achieving a competitive advantage. Brands can be seen as a heuristic device, encapsulating a series of values that enable the consumer to make quick and efficient choices. More recently, the notion of a political brand and the rhetoric of branding have been widely adopted by many political parties as they seek to differentiate themselves, and this has led to an emerging interest in the idea of the political brand. Therefore, this paper examines the UK Conservative Party brand under David Cameron’s leadership and examines the applicability of Kapferer’s brand identity prism to political branding. This paper extends and operationalises the brand identity prism into a ‘political brand identity network’ which identifies the inter-relatedness of the components of the corporate political brand and the candidate political brand. Crucial for practitioners, this model can demonstrate how the brand is presented and communicated to the electorate and serves as a useful mechanism to identify consistency within the corporate and candidate political brands.     

Evaluating the potential of agent-based modelling to capture consumer grocery retail store choice behaviours

Evolving consumer behaviours with regards to store and channel choice, shopping frequency, shopping mission and spending heighten the need for robust spatial modelling tools for use within retail analytics. In this paper, we report on collaboration with a major UK grocery retailer to assess the feasibility of modelling consumer store choice behaviours at the level of the individual consumer. We benefit from very rare access to our collaborating retailers’ customer data which we use to develop a proof-of-concept agent-based model (ABM). Utilising our collaborating retailers’ loyalty card database, we extract key consumer behaviours in relation to shopping frequency, mission, store choice and spending. We build these observed behaviours into our ABM, based on a simplified urban environment, calibrated and validated against observed consumer data. Our ABM is able to capture key spatiotemporal drivers of consumer store choice behaviour at the individual level. Our findings could afford new opportunities for spatial modelling within the retail sector, enabling the complexity of consumer behaviours to be captured and simulated within a novel modelling framework. We reflect on further model development required for use in a commercial context for location-based decision-making.     

Internal brand commitment,a multi-dimensional construct? Case study evidence within a collaborative independent retail network context

Commitment and other relational constructs have predominantly been examined within the organisational studies literature, and in more recent times within the relationship marketing literature, but have been largely neglected within the retail and branding literatures. There is little empirical evidence of commitment as a multi-dimensional construct within the marketing domain. Brand commitment studies have largely adopted an external consumer-based perspective, with little attention afforded to internal brand commitment, and the dimensionality of the construct. This study addresses this deficit, and aims to explore the dimensionality of the internal brand commitment construct within the business-to-business context of a collaborative independent retail network. A qualitative case study methodology is adopted based primarily on interviews with owner-managers. The study provides empirical evidence of the multi-dimensionality of the internal brand commitment construct, with both attitudinal and behavioural dimensions. Although the importance of internal branding has been acknowledged for service sector organisations, this is the first empirical evidence to document the complexity of internal brand commitment in a retail context. The study concludes that while calculative commitment builds organisational commitment, internal brand commitment requires an affective dimension, which leads to what can be interpreted as brand citizenship behaviour and/or conceptualised as the formation of a brand community.     

Consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) and the role of social media communications: Qualitative findings from the Malaysian automotive industry

Previous studies on consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) have maintained that CBBE is a multidimensional construct which reflects both consumers’ perceptions and attitudes. However, only few of the extant CBBE models emanate from the context of automotive brands. As such, this present study employs a qualitative approach using a semi-structured face-to-face interview among 11 informants, to explore the concept of CBBE in the context of automotive brands. Also, this study explores the role of social media communications in developing CBBE for automotive brands. The findings of this research demonstrate that CBBE is a valid concept which reflects consumers’ perception and mindset towards their knowledge, which are reflected through brand awareness, hedonic brand image, functional brand image, and brand sustainability of automotive brands. Additionally, the marketing activities and communication contents on social media play an important role in improving the perception of automotive brands in consumers’ minds, hence the development of automotive CBBE. The theoretical implications of these research findings are that this study provides an insight into the feasibility of developing a specific CBBE model for automotive brands. Practically, this study presents insights for brand manager on the importance of developing CBBE through social media communications.     

Brand heritage as a temporal perception: conceptualisation,measure and consequences

ABSTRACT

This research looks at the concept of brand heritage as a branded representation of the past and its influence on cognitive and affective responses. Although numerous items of research mention brand heritage, the subject still lacks conceptual clarity. This paper aims to address this gap and to build a scale measuring its perception by consumers. The literature review leads to a conceptualisation of brand heritage as the perception of a brand’s temporal management. Then, one qualitative and three quantitative studies facilitate the emergence and validate a three-dimensional scale of perceived brand heritage. A model demonstrates how brand heritage enhances brand credibility and personal nostalgia. This paper contributes to the apprehension of change and continuity in brand management, with potential extensions to other disciplines.     

Putting sense of place at the centre of place brand development

Developing a place brand involves highlighting the distinctive attributes of a place that could be used to enhance its attractiveness. This study is in line with recent literature where the concept of place identity is being replaced by sense of place, which provides an holistic view of a place by integrating all users’ experiences and feelings. Through a qualitative study involving 31 individual interviews with users and meetings with managers of a French coastal area, this paper proposes a five-dimensional definition of sense of place and its use as a tool for developing a place brand in 3 ways: defining the place brand concept, bringing together the internal stakeholders and invoving users in brand building.     

Brand consistency and coherency at the London 2012 Olympic Games

Abstract

As brand management and brand perceptions attract more attention in both academia and in practice, examining the link or lack thereof between brand identity and image is becoming increasingly important. The existence of brand consistency and coherency is examined in this research, which aimed to evaluate whether the pre- or post-event brand image of the Olympic Games or the London 2012 Games, in the domestic UK population and media, were aligned with the brand identities of these objects. Online surveys and media content analysis revealed that both brands have yet to achieve consistency or coherency within these two key stakeholder groups, even though the brand image of the 2012 Games improved following the event. What this study suggests is that unless the brand owner takes key stakeholders’ perceptions into consideration, a coherent and consistent brand identity does not necessarily equate to these being a feature of the brand image, with the connection between perceptions requiring additional attention.     

Beyond window signs: Understanding the affect‐based effects of window signs on store patronage intentions

Store managers commonly use window signs to decorate their stores and, more importantly, to communicate store‐related information to their customers. This research investigates the role window signs play in influencing consumers’ attitudes and store patronage intentions. Empirical evidence from two studies (data from a real‐life store environment and from an experimental setting) indicates that window signs generate positive inferences to consumers about the store image and the store promotion value, which ultimately influence consumers’ patronage intentions. Furthermore, this study proposes and tests a model suggesting that window signs represent a diagnostic cue from which consumers infer a sense of place identity. The results show that place identity partially mediates the relationship between consumers’ attitude toward window signs and consumers’ store patronage intentions. Moreover, this study includes the store manager's perspective and finds evidence that retail managers have positive attitudes toward window signs, which encourage them to rely on this promotional tool to announce store promotions. Implications of the findings for the role of window signs are discussed.