Customer and brand manager perspectives on brand relationships: a conceptual framework
| Published date | 01 August 2005 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/10610420510616331 |
| Date | 01 August 2005 |
| Pages | 300-309 |
| Author | Colin Jevons,Mark Gabbott,Leslie de Chernatony |
| Subject Matter | Marketing |
Customer and brand manager perspectives on
brand relationships: a conceptual framework
Colin Jevons and Mark Gabbott
Department of Marketing, Monash University, Caulfield East, Australia, and
Leslie de Chernatony
Birmingham Business School, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
Abstract
Purpose – To provide a conceptual framework to help researchers and managers understand the complex factors affecting the associations between
brands.
Design/methodology/approach – Brand extension, co-branding and other associative techniques together with an increasingly communicative
environment are resulting in an increasingly complex set of networks and relationships between brands, with singular and multiple relationship forms.
There are two key perspectives on these complex relationships, that of the customer and that of the brand owner, i.e. what is seen at the point of
transaction and what is expressed by the various brand constructors. Two key perspectives on brand relationships are used that of the customer and
that of the brand owner, to describe and discuss an analytical classification of these relationships.
Findings – A conceptual synthesis of the dynamics of brand networks and business relationships is presented and a 2 £2 matrix is developed to
classify and describe the four categories that emerge.
Practical implications – Different management strategies for different types of business-brand relationships are suggested.
Originality/value – The conceptual synthesis is new and some uses of the classification for researchers and brand managers are suggested.
Keywords Brand management, Customers
Paper type Conceptual paper
An executive summary for managers and executive
readers can be found at the end of this article.
Introduction
This paper reviews work on the sources of brand meaning,
understanding brand meaning, and managing brand meaning
before moving towards a discussion of the changing
environment in which brands operate and in which meanings
are communicated. Most of the literature to date has
investigated singular brands, but in practice there is a complex
plurality of brands, brought together by accident or by design.
The brand association literature discussed here demonstrates
that customers make judgements based on association, not
aggregation. In this paper we investigate and conceptualise
deliberate, purposive associations between brands, compare
these with customer perceptions of associations, propose a
2£2 matrix to better understand these, and make consequent
recommendations for brand managers.
Hoeffler and Keller (2003), in their meta-analysis of the
branding literature, catalogued 42 empirical findings that
showed the critical importance of brands to organisational
performance. Marketing has an increasing focus on co-
created value and the relationships between organisations and
customers (see Vargo and Lusch, 2004). Despite this, the
effects of various techniques for establishing, modifying, and
understanding relationships between brands are not clearly
understood. As brand associations and relationships are
becoming more common in business (see, for example, Aaker
and Joachimsthaler, 2000), so too are new and improved
forms of communicating. Communicative or rich
environments such as the internet accentuate the complexity
of brand meanings, and interactions within internet
communities emphasize the co-invention of brand
interpretations (de Chernatony, 2001). Thus, increasing
communicativity makes it more important to understand the
forms of associations that are made by customers.
Brands interact in a variety of different ways, but we can
identify two key perspectives on these interactions: the
perspective of the customer and the perspective of the brand
owner. From the point of view of the customer, meaning is
derived from a rich diversity of brand experiences that are
themselves dependent on a rich variety of backgrounds and
contexts. This diversity gives rise to a highly complex set of
brand constellations (see, for example, Simonin and Ruth,
1998; Lange and Torn,2002). We seek in this paper to provide
an analytical mechanism to dissect these constellations and
reduce them into analysable segments and integrate them with
the second perspective: the brand owner. Brand owners do not
exist in isolation and while many relationships between
businesses are purely transactional, brand-related interactions
between brand owners are worthy of consideration since they
too can impact upon brand meaning.
We review work to date on brand extensions and co-
branding to illustrate the strengths of the associations between
brands and discuss a possible paradigm shift as a result of the
changing environment of increased communication through
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at
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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1061-0421.htm
Journal of Product & Brand Management
14/5 (2005) 300–309
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/10610420510616331]
300
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