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Dealing with discrepancies of a brand in change: recomposition of value and meanings in a network
Abstract
Brands become shaped by interaction processes in the networks in which they are embedded. Research addressing this phenomenon has departed both from a co-creation angle, and to some extent by examining co-destruction. In this chapter, we adopt a process-oriented multiple stakeholder view to brands and explore the concept of brand discrepancies, i.e. inconsistencies and disruptions that can prompt brand co-destruction and lead to a reconfiguration of meanings and value in the brand's ecosystem. The chapter presents a longitudinal case study from the context of food distribution to illustrate the ever-changing nature of brand reality. The findings add to the brand co-creation discussion by showing that brand co-destruction is not always negative, but the reconfiguration, recomposition, and reorchestration of brand meanings and value can also be seen as positive outcomes of brand discrepancies. These findings depict brand management as a process of orchestration in a multi-stakeholder setting, rather than as something conducted unilaterally by a brand governor.
... To conceptually grasp these interactions, this chapter draws on socio-culturally informed branding literature (e.g. Vallaster & von Wallpach 2013;Norrgrann & Saraniemi 2022), and specifically the idea of brand assemblage (Lucarelli et al, 2022;Hill et al 2014) based on assemblage thinking (Canniford & Bajde 2016). In doing so, we highlight the role of music in a service experience not only as a tactical marketing variable, but as a part of a broader set of interrelationships and dynamics that need to be understood in order to know when and how music has the ability to provide value in a service experience. ...
This chapter examines how service providers use music in assembling experiencescapes in the context of contemporary and street dance classes and group exercise services. Taking a socio-material approach, the role of music is explored in the interplay of practices, meaning making and entanglements between material/digital and social entities making up the service brand experience. The chapter discusses ways in which music is utilized, and draws attention to elements and interactions, and symbolic complementarities and tensions involved with its integration into the dance / exericise experiencescape. The rich empirical account draws on multiple forms of qualitative, ethnographic data, including in-depth interviews with dance and exercise class instructors.
Recent developments within branding theory suggest a move towards co-created branding. In theory, this approach holds great promise in terms of engaging stakeholders in dynamic processes of creating the corporate brands, but a brand co-creation process also exposes the organization to, for example, loss of control, dilution of identity and potential disharmony between the multiple voices co-creating the brand. Paradoxically, while brand co-creation has received increased theoretical attention, the role of the internal stakeholders (especially the employees) in this process remains vastly uncharted. Therefore, through an empirical case study of the Danish National Gallery, this paper shows how a public organization, which has engaged in brand co-creation, struggles to orchestrate the many internal voices in the co-creational dialogue. The importance of considering internal stakeholders in the co-creation process is illustrated through the discovery of six diverse brand expressions that surface in the so-called touchpoints of co-creation, i.e. the museum’s communication with external stakeholders. Here, different professional groups of employees communicate their version of the brand, leaving the impression of a brand speaking with several, at times clashing, voices.
Value co-destruction is a possible outcome of business, public and consumer collaboration. We examine reason that lead to value co-destruction and when these reasons emerge. Since previous research on the topic is limited our research approach is abductive qualitative research. The empirical data emerges from 19 semi-structure interviews conducted in seven organizations operating in Finland. Results indicate that value co-destruction emerges due to eight reasons. Our empirically grounded framework for value co-destruction demonstrates when these reasons emerge (before or after the collaboration or interaction) or they are time-independent. Results provide important insights for academics and managers into how value co-creation efforts can have negative outcomes and at what stage each reason is more likely to happen.
A new theoretical framework is developed to scrutinize the strategic advantage for branding. The theoretical framework applies both at the firm level, for the marketing of individual brands and corporate brands, and also to branding where a marketing agent plays a facilitating role within a community or industry. The framework presents branding as a dynamic capability held by a marketing agent within a market network. Two interrelated processes are involved: (i) managing brand identity and (ii) facilitating integration with the social processes that co-create brand meanings for buyers, sellers, and other actors. The social complexity of this dynamic capability makes the brand difficult to imitate and so provides a strong strategic advantage for the marketing organization. An agenda for future research is developed and the article concludes with theoretical and managerial implications.
The commentary endorses the view of brands as complex social relations that develop among a multitude of enacted stakeholder identities and discusses in what ways this perspective may lead to a novel paradigm of brand building – one that highlights the dynamic and fluid character of brand identity. The author underlines the importance of better understanding the many ways in which (internal and external) stakeholders can contribute to brand identity construction. Suggesting how this novel brand building paradigm can contribute to resolving confusions stemming from current misunderstandings within the branding literature, the commentary sees the opening of a new avenue of fascinating research questions that can lead to a better understanding of stakeholders' roles in the construction of polysemous brands identities.
Recent research underlines that strong branded identities are created through co-creational processes in which multiple stakeholders are actively involved and brand identities are matched with cultural, political, and economic forces in society. However, there is a lack of in-depth research into how organizations attempt to adopt new branding logics. To address this research gap, we conduct a study of a university that is rebranding itself in accordance with a new market-oriented, service-dominant logic. While harmonic value co-creation between the brand and stakeholders is emphasized in an earlier literature, our study shows that attempts to adopt these logics trigger contradictory and adversarial interpretations among stakeholders about the role and identity of the focal actor vis-à-vis their own. We conclude that adopting new branding logics involves struggles and dynamics of power and resistance, which have passed unnoticed in earlier research. Resistance is not only targeted toward the brand's symbolic meanings and conducted by marginal consumer groups to enhance their own identities. Rather, it can also be targeted toward the tangible resource roles that stakeholders are expected to assume vis-à-vis the brand, and conducted by various stakeholder resistors – with the outcome of undermining and shifting the essence of the brand itself.
Brands are integral to contemporary marketing practice. Notwithstanding their ubiquitous presence in marketing, the question of what brands do in the shaping markets remains understudied. We examine the brand as a market shaping device which acts within, and alongside, its world to actualise the reality envisioned. We base on ethnographic material on the Good African brand and on a performative text authored by the entrepreneur behind the Good African brand, to explore the unfolding agencement (brand world) and reveal the brand’s performativity achieved.
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/jmSCcNIszJaBVtmGWtWe/full
Marketing theory has conceptualised value co-creation through research on provider and consumer resource integrations. Little attention, however, has been devoted to how companies, consumers, and other stakeholders interact and co-create value in the context of multiple interactions. This study, therefore, explores co-creation by investigating the football experience, which is characterised by often-complex relations of multiple actors involved. Through a sociocultural perspective, actors’ resource integration is understood as being dependent on the shifting and contradicting interests of actors, which renders actors both enabled and also constrained in their interactive processes. This study demonstrates that actors’ contradictory resource integrations and interactions are fundamental for value to be co-created, since they give rise to new interpretations and meaning creations. In conclusion, the study reveals regulations, the media, and the collective strength of consumers to be unbalancing and yet creative mechanisms within the value co-creation process.
Brand research increasingly recognizes the active role of multiple stakeholders in co-creating brand meaning and the importance of new social media supporting stakeholders in their co-creation efforts. However, empirical insights into the social process of online multi-stakeholder brand meaning co-creation are so far missing. This study contributes to existing research by illuminating the social dynamics that characterize multi-stakeholder brand meaning co-creation in a virtual environment. The authors undertake an online discursive inquiry focusing on stakeholders’ textual interactions regarding the UK Gate Gourmet brand crisis. The empirical study aggregates online stakeholder texts to illustrate (a) relationships between salient stakeholders and (b) discursive strategies and resources stakeholders apply to co-create brand meaning. The article concludes that brand meaning results from simultaneous interactions between interdependent
stakeholders in a network (termed multi-log). Successfully managing brands requires management's active
engagement in this multi-log.
Drawing on an empirical study of public transport, this paper studies interactive value formation at the provider-customer interface, from a practice-theory perspective. In contrast to the bulk of previous research, it argues that interactive value formation is not only associated with value co-creation but also with value co-destruction. In addition, the paper also identifies five interaction value practices - informing, greeting, delivering, charging, and helping - and theorizes how interactive value formation takes place as well as how value is intersubjectively assessed by actors at the provider-customer interface. Furthermore, the paper also distinguishes between four types of interactive value formation praxis corresponding with four subject positions which practitioners step into when engaging in interactive value formation.
Purpose
This paper aims to explore three central tensions in the debate on corporate branding. Is a normative or a social constructionist approach more appropriate in conceptualising and managing corporate brands? Should the focus be on the organizational or the individual level? Must organizations take a static (focusing on continuity) or a more dynamic (focusing on change) perspective on corporate branding?
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper based on a critical review of relevant literature and the papers included in this special issue.
Findings
Avenues for future research in corporate branding are highlighted.
Originality/value
Several issues fundamental to the corporate branding debate remain controversial. This paper sheds light on three key tensions in managing corporate brands and shapes the research agenda for future studies.
Purpose – Noting that a fundamental tenet of service-dominant (S-D) logic is the co-creation of value-in-use, this paper aims to explore the theoretical possibility that the interactions between service systems cannot only co-create value, but also have adverse consequences leading to actual value co-destruction. Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper critically reviews the dominance of value co-creation and value-in-use in S-D logic. Noting the relative lack of research in the converse possibility, the study proposes and explores the implications of value co-destruction as a new concept which should be introduced within the framework of S-D logic. Findings – The study proposes a formal definition for the new proposed concept of value co-destruction. It describes in detail the process by which it occurs, showing that value can be co-destroyed through the interactions between different systems, resulting in value destruction-through-misuse. Indeed, value co-destruction occurs when a service system accidentally or intentionally misuses resources (its own resources and/or those of another service system) by acting in an inappropriate or unexpected manner. Research limitations/implications – This paper is purely conceptual and exploratory. Empirical examination of the theoretical findings regarding value-co-destruction is required. Possible avenues of interest for such empirical research of value co-destruction are suggested. Practical implications – Limiting the occurrence of misuse by aligning the mutual expectations of interacting service systems should reduce the risks of value co-destruction. Recovering from misuse should also be considered. Originality/value – This study is apparently the first to have introduced the notion of value co-destruction into the conceptual framework of S-D logic.
In this article, we employ a case‐study method to investigate the learning processes used to negotiate brand meaning within an anti‐brand community. The negotiation of brand meaning is a social process where community members engage in brand‐related discourses, interpretations, and sense‐making. Situated within new social movement theory, we investigate the anti‐Wal‐Mart community. Our study identifies three learning processes that are fundamental to social movement formation and mobilization: (1) counterfactual thinking, (2) discursive storytelling, and (3) noncompulsory observation. We conclude the article with a discussion of our findings and offer suggestions for future research.
The meanings of brand and branding have been evolving over the past several decades. This evolution is converging on a new
conceptual logic, which views brand in terms of collaborative, value co-creation activities of firms and all of their stakeholders and brand value in terms of the stakeholders’ collectively perceived value-in-use. The authors argue that this new logic parallels and reflects
the related, evolving service-dominant (S-D) logic in marketing. They provide an historical account of the branding literature,
organize it into eras, and connect it to the evolution in marketing as captured by S-D logic. The analysis provides further
support for the S-D logic of marketing and suggests a related research agenda for furthering the understanding of brand and
branding. It also suggests that marketing managers might benefit from investing resources in building strong brand relationships
with all of their stakeholders and a service-dominant firm philosophy built around brand value co-creation.
Traditionally, corporate brand identity was considered to be directed and controlled by managers. However, more recent research has begun to recognize the limits of this view, which has led to the emergence of a stakeholder-driven, dynamic perspective, in which multiple stakeholders co-create diverse corporate brand meanings. This perspective argues that while managers have influence over the essence of the corporate brand, other stakeholders imprint and share their own interpretations. To better understand the process of corporate brand identity co-creation, we used a case study method with multiple cases, involving five small and medium sized business-to-business (B2B) corporate brands. We specifically chose B2B corporate brands, because they are often built on long-term and close relationships with diverse stakeholders, serving as a solid ground for illustrating the process of co-creation. To obtain the necessary depth of insight, we conducted 37 semi-structured interviews. Our research shows that corporate brand identity co-creation in B2B contexts is an ongoing dynamic process where multiple internal and external stakeholders engage in four different but interrelated performances: communicating; internalizing; contesting; and elucidating.
Keywords
Corporate brand identity; co-creation; stakeholder performances; multiple case study; qualitative research.
Approaches to positioning predominantly examine the input and outcome effectiveness of certain positioning strategies. However, less is known about the positioning management process and internal dynamics. This study remedies this limitation by identifying corporate brand positioning (CBP) in industrial firms as a strategic development process. Based on comparative case studies within two globally operating industrial multi-business firms, this study opens the proverbial ‘black box’ to reveal how CBP occurs over time and what the driving mechanisms are. Findings suggest understanding CBP as a recurring, multi-level process, making it more than just a corporate-level marketing activity. Positioning episodes are found to pass through seven stages, each creating enablers and barriers for change. CBP should be viewed as a political process that integrates stable corporate and business levels and temporary levels that emerge in micro-events of reflective strategic practice.
Purpose
This paper aims to apply a broader perspective of branding to foster new insights and develop strategies to address product counterfeiting.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of the counterfeiting and branding literature leads to the development of a new conceptual framework that incorporates proactive, collaborative processes, in addition to the traditional product branding approach.
Findings
The integrative framework provides a basis to develop innovative, proactive strategies that complement traditional branding approaches to address product counterfeiting. The complexity of an integrative framework (or network) offers more opportunities for the firm to co-create robust meaning with multiple stakeholders. Identity elements are readily copied, whereas meanings are not. These strategies help to control counterfeiting by developing deep and inimitable relationships between managers and other stakeholders in a marketing network.
Research limitations/implications
A research agenda is proposed to structure future studies on counterfeiting.
Practical implications
The framework outlines how to leverage collaboration between managers and brand stakeholders to complement conventional approaches to control counterfeiting based on traditional product branding.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the growing body of counterfeiting and brand protection literature by adapting and applying contemporary integrative branding concepts, leading to novel strategies to address the issue.
Mainstream brand management literature views brands as products or organisations carrying brand names and brand managers as being in control of brand-related actions and outcomes. By contrast, recent empirical research shows the substantial influence of stakeholders on brands. Together with brand management, stakeholders shape brands by participating in brand-related interaction. European brand research accordingly treats brands as ongoing and complex processes in constant flux. Nevertheless, literature suffers from a significant lack of theoretical underpinnings for understanding brands as complex processes; in this respect, building on European philosophy is a fruitful avenue. This paper introduces the metaphor of the rhizome and draws on European process philosophy to further develop an integrative processual understanding of brands. Brand management claiming control over brands as processes turns out to be a delusion.
The “co-creation” label has proliferated over the past decade. With little consensus on what “co-creation” is, we offer a novel, unifying perspective by anchoring its theorization in creation through interactions. We develop a definition of co-creation as enactment of interactional creation across interactive system-environments (afforded by interactive platforms) entailing agencing engagements and structuring organizations. Interactional creation is enacted by means of interactions of “agencial assemblages”, while agencing engagements and structuring organizations enable and constrain interactions. Interactive platforms, i.e., instantiations of agencial assemblages, are composed of heterogeneous relations of artifacts, processes, interfaces, and persons. Aided by digitalized technologies, interactive platforms afford a multiplicity of interactive system-environments that connect creational interactions with how experienced outcomes emerge from their underlying resourced capabilities. We apply our definitional framework to the practice of value creation as a co-creation, cutting across conventional “production”, “exchange”, and “use” activities. In doing so, we introduce the concept of value-in-interactional creation. We conclude by providing a summary of our conceptualization, explanation of terms in definition, and illustration in practice, while emphasizing the main contributions of our framework and its research implications.
Purpose
This study aims to examine the roles of business partners in co-creating a corporate brand image.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts different business partners’ perspectives to analyse corporate brand co-creative actions through a case study within a business-to-business company (B2B SME) context. Interviews with the case company’s manager and key business partners were used as the primary source of empirical data.
Findings
The study suggests a typology of seven roles which business partners adopt in corporate brand image co-creation: co-innovator, co-marketer, brand specialist, knowledge provider, referee, intermediary and advocate. The study also highlights the management of co-creative relationships in corporate brand image co-creation in the context of business partners.
Practical implications
This study increases the understanding of the complexities and dynamics related to corporate brand image construction and helps managers size the potential of business partner relationships in corporate branding and manage co-creative brand partner relationships.
Originality/value
The roles are examined by applying a conceptual framework built by combining branding research in a novel way with the role theory. The study also provides a multi-stakeholder perspective to brand co-creation.
The development and role of brand identity in new B2B ventures is not well explored despite the challenge for such organisations in establishing reputational legitimacy. Previous research defines corporate brand identity as stable and endogenous to the organisation based either on the reputational capital of the organisation or the founder. We challenge this view in this paper from a conceptual and empirical perspective. Combining narrative theory and performativity theory this article suggests brand identity develops as a narrative performance. The study employs a narrative case analysis of interviews and archival data generated during a three-year period to examine the development of corporate brand over time. This study shows that the development of corporate brand identity and the context of the development of new B2B venture are closely intertwined processes and provides a framework for understanding the phenomenon. Brand identity is not a stable core emanating from inside the company but develops over time through a reciprocal sensemaking and dynamic interactions between company and the key external stakeholders in its context. We conclude that brand identity is built not only upon the reputational capital of past behaviours but of the brand itself as it explores and interacts within its brand eco-system.
The purpose of this article is to identify the antecedents of diminished value in business-to-business exchange. There is only a limited amount of research on value destruction in the context of service-dominant (S-D) logic and, to the best of our knowledge, no dyadic studies. From a business perspective, awareness of factors that have the potential to impede value creation will enable relationship partners to increase mutual value realization. The article examines the accuracy of the term ‘value co-destruction’ as a blanket description for interaction that results in value reduction, and proposes that, in many instances, ‘value diminution’ may be more appropriate. The study adopts an exploratory, qualitative approach. One-to-one interviews are conducted with clients and their creative agencies. The results suggest that diminished value outcomes are caused by resource deficiencies and resource misuse by both relational partners, separately and jointly. We propose a model of five higher-order antecedents of value diminution: absence of trust, inadequate communication, power/dependence imbalance, inadequate coordination and inadequate human capital.
Over the years, research has covered many different aspects of business relationships; for example, there are streams investigating relationship initiation (e.g., Edvardsson et al. 2008), relationship development (e.g., Dwyer et al. 1987), critical episodes in relationships (e.g., Gidhagen 2002), relationship termination (e.g., Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2000), as well as network effects of relationships (e.g., Håkansson and Snehota 1995). However, there are few studies that focus on the time after a business relationship is terminated. A practical explanation may be the difficulty to study something ‘that is not,’ given, for instance, the reluctance to discuss any termination processes, or even problems of finding anyone with memories of the past. Another reason is of course that there may be considered little rationale in analysing something that is no more. However, this no-longer-existing business relationship may indeed be turned into ‘something’ again—once terminated, and later reactivated. In such a situation, the former relationship, its termination and also the time between termination and reactivation are all important aspects to consider.
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http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F978-1-137-53765-2_15
This article argues that branding is changing away from an organization-centric approach to one that is highly participative. The implication of this is that managers need to build networks of participation both internally with employees and externally with consumers and other stakeholders. This heightened connectivity helps bring employees and stakeholders together to develop new insights, create new experiences and reduce risk. The implication of this change is that organizations need to have a clear understanding of their brands, but also a willingness to create the conditions in which others can help mould it. Using illustrative examples of LEGO, Mozilla and adidas, the article shows how some organizations are embracing this spirit of openness, but it also points out that there are challenges in managing brands that have become more fluid and complex.
This article discusses how inertia manifests itself in business relationships. It examines how path dependencies shape the development of a firm's resources and accumulate inertia within them, which can affect how the firm relates to other actors in its network. The article draws on different theoretical perspectives that have dealt with the notion of inertia and provides a holistic understanding of this concept, its antecedents and forms of expression. The study uses a longitudinal single-case study of a company where a dominant business relationship has accumulated inertia and affected the firm's engagement in other relationships and development efforts as an empirical illustration. The analysis examines how change forces challenge the existing paths and reveal both positive and negative inertia effects. The article provides a discussion of the different types of inertia and its expressions on different levels and functions.
Tensions are natural in coopetitive business relationships that simultaneously involve cooperation and competition. The purpose of this study is to investigate how tensions are managed in coopetitive business relationships and examine the potential outcomes of the management of such tensions. The study will focus on various kinds of coopetitive relationships and how the management of the different tensions produces specific outcomes. The empirical study is based on comparative case study research on coopetitive business networks that features two different kinds of cases. The findings of the study contribute to coopetition research by identifying several new perspectives on tensions. Different levels of cooperation and competition in a coopetitive relationship as well as other underlying issues cannot alone determine tensions, but aspects such as the management of tensions are crucial. Most tensions are managed by using styles of competition and avoidance and result in mixed outcomes, which implies both positive and negative perceptions.
The present study aims to (i) extend knowledge of the nature of conflicts and of their influence on value co-creation in project networks and (ii) contribute to the management of conflicts to enable value co-creation.This work is based on an action research methodology conducted during a five-year case study of a firm operating in the Information and Communication (IT) industry. Three dimensions of conflicts are identified: (i) types, (ii) timing and (iii) effects. An understanding of these dimensions facilitates the management of conflicts. Two levels of intervention are isolated: (i) the strategic level and (ii) the operational level. The paper offers a new understanding of conflicts that should precede their management, which is crucial to enabling project network value.
Co-evolution in technological development -the role of friction
- H Håkansson
- A Waluszewski
Håkansson, H. & Waluszewski, A. (2001), "Co-evolution in technological development -the role of
friction", Proceedings of the 17th IMP conference, Oslo, Norway.