Guest editorial: 30 years of brand relationship research
| Date | 30 July 2024 |
| Pages | 413-418 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-05-2024-024 |
| Published date | 30 July 2024 |
| Author | Marc Fetscherin,Cleopatra Veloutsou |
Guest editorial: 30 years of
brand relationship research
1. Introduction
Last year (2023) marked the 30-year milestone of consumer brand
relationship research. Can you believe that it has been 30years
since Blackstone’s (1993) initial research, followed by Fajer and
Schouten’s (1995) and Fournier’s (1998) papers? Together they
have formed the basis and inspired the brand relationships field.
Since these early days, the consumer brand relationship field, or
brand relationship in short, has evolved and growing in scope and
complexity. The early papers portrayed brands as active
participants in brand relationships, laying the foundation for a
diverse study area that captivates both academic and practical
attention from various disciplines over the last three decades. The
progress of this field is demonstrated by the creation and
implementation of diverse cutting-edge metrics and frameworks
(Fetscherin et al., 2021) aimed at comprehending the different
brand relationship types varying in polarity and strength
(Fetscherin et al., 2019), also identified in bibliometric literature
engagement (Alvarez et al.,2023).
The relationship paradigm comes as a response to brands today
not merely being symbols of transactions; but having evolved into
entities with which consumers form relationships, such as engage,
interact, experience and co-create meaning and value (Bagozzi
et al., 2021). This shift in perspective underscores the
development of two main types of brand-centric relationships:
individual and collective (Veloutsou, 2009;Veloutsou and Ruiz
Mafe, 2020). Individual brand relationships emergewhen
consumers connect to brands on a personal lev el, often leading to
deep emotional bonds, regardless of ownership. Collectively,
consumers seek out others with similar brand affinities, forming
communities, tribes or brand-centric collectives with consistingof
members sharing a collective identity, sharing information,
enjoying communal activities and expressing shared brand
enthusiasm.
In that respect, brand relationships have transformed from
an initial concept introduced over three decades ago into a
robust field within marketing. Thisevolution has seen a
transition from exploratory inve stigations to the development
of measurement tools and a broadening of academic
encounter. The creation of measur ement instruments such as
the MBLM Brand Intimacy Study (MBLM, 2022) and
Edelman’s Trust Barometer (Edelman, 2024) indicates the
concept’s relevance to both academia and practitioners. This
issue in the Journal of Product and Bra nd Management aims to
contribute to provide first an update on t his research field, and
then particularly presents the latest ar ticles on that field.
2.Current state of research
The research approach adopted in this editorial follows the
same methodology established by Fetscherin and Heinrich
(2015) and Fetscherin et al.’s(2019)special issue editorial in
the Journal of Product and Brand Management. In construct
with other recent bibliometric work using Scopus and a
specific set of keywords to assesscollect ive brand relationships
(Roy Bhattacharjee et al.,2022;Veloutsou and Liao, 2023),
or both individual and collective brand relationships in the
online context (Veloutsou and Ruiz Maf e, 2020). The papers
selected for this analysis were extracted from the Web of
Science (WoS) and are publicationsciting Fournier’s(1998)
seminal work. The purpose of thi s work is to complement the
previous two bibliometric analy ses (Fetscherin and Heinrich,
2015;Fetscherin et al., 2019) by coll ecting data since the last
bibliometric paper in 2019 based on data until November
2018. To achieve this goal, this data set includes papers
published between January 1, 2018 and February 22, 2024
(date retrieved from WoS). To demonstrate the trend in the
number of publications per year, the data from the previous
two bibliometric studies is combined with the data
downloaded for the current analys is, without double counting
work published in 2018. It needs to be notedthat, given the
inclusion criteria and choices the process is not totally
replicable, because the time windows they cover cannot be
exactly repeated since they are notup to the end of a period
that the database recognizes (calendar year). The selected
papers for analysis in this editorial focus on individual
consumer brand relationshipsinany context citing Fournier’s
(1998) seminal paper, but this choice has possibly led to
omitting some relevant work not citin g this particular article.
The concept of brand relationship has become widely
accepted in the marketing field. After anintroduction stage
(around 1993–2010), brand relationship went into a
significant growth stage between 2010 and 2020 and it looks
as if it might be entering the mature stage since 2020 wit h less
growth in the number of papers published but with a
consistent number of around 250 papers per year published
(Figure 1). More specifically 251 papers were published in
2019, 255 papers in 2020, 267 papers in 2021, and 258 and
256 papers in 2022 and 2023, respecti vely.
To assess and compare these threeperiods, the number of
articles published, the average number of articles published
per year, the total number of contributing authors and
journals publishing brand relationship-related articles were
examined (Table 1). A breakdown ofthe main disciplines
these journals belong to, demonstrates that business and
management are the two dominant s ubject disciplines. There
is a clear and substantial growth in research output,
collaboration and diversity ofpublication venues across the
evaluated periods, with the current editorial highlighting the
most substantial data set, the highest average of articles
published per year (close to 250 papers), the most authors
(over 3,300) and the greatest variety of journals when
compared to the previous two bibliome tric studies. This trend
suggests not only an increase in research activity but also a
significant expansion of the research community and
dissemination channels over thelast thr ee decades.
The comparison clearly demonstrates an evolving
landscape of academic research, where the volume of
contributions, the scale of authorship and the spectrum of
Thecurrentissueandfulltextarchiveofthisjournalisavailableon
Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/1061-0421.htm
Journal of Product & Brand Management
33/4 (2024) 413–418
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-05-2024-024]
413
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