Brand Iconicity: a Shared Reality Perspective

2009

We propose that brands do not achieve iconic status by chance. This article focuses on how brands manage iconic status effectively. Drawing on an exploratory study of iconic brands, we identify a brand's ability to inspire consumers and connect with them on a personal level as well as its visual identity and presence in consumers' mind as critical elements of brand status. Consumers' perceptions of a sample of brands were investigated through in-depth interviews, followed by the examination of these brands' activities through case-study analyses. The alignment between brand strategies and the relevant features highlighted by consumers was then assessed. A comprehensive framework for achieving iconicity is presented and discussed.

Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2019

Fournier and Alvarez (2019-this issue) and Batra (2019-this issue), respectively, offer interpretive and psychological perspectives on how brands acquire cultural meanings. In this commentary, we discuss the opportunities for leveraging these two perspectives, and use an assemblage theory lens to uncover the dynamics of how cultural models articulated through cultural myths, metaphors, ideologies, and cultural objects circulate through the brand assemblage and through the consumer assemblage. We offer a bridge-crossing approach to research opportunities bringing both a socio-historical-cultural approach and psychological approach to understand how cultural meanings are assembled into brands and how consumers assemble brands into their lives.

2012

Abstract Global brands are faced with the challenge of conveying concepts that not only are consistent across borders but also resonate with consumers of different cultures. Building on prior research indicating that abstract brand concepts induce more favorable consumer responses than functional attributes, the authors introduce a generalizable and robust structure of abstract brand concepts as representations of human values.

2006

Recent research has shifted attention from brand producers and products toward consumer response and services to understand brand value creation. Often missing from these insights, however, is a focus on cultural processes that affect contemporary brands, including historical context, ethical concerns, and representational conventions. A brand culture perspective reveals how branding has opened up to include interdisciplinary research that both complements and complicates economic and managerial analysis of branding. If brands exist as cultural, ideological, and political objects, then brand researchers require tools developed to understand culture, ideology, and politics, in conjunction with more typical branding concepts, such as equity, strategy, and value.

2011

Abstract With globalization, the number of individuals with knowledge about multiple cultures is on the rise. This article illustrates how studying consumer reactions to brands that are loaded with cultural meanings can contribute to developing a cultural psychology of globalization. Our review demonstrates that brands can be considered cultural 'products'–they are tangible, public representations of meanings and ideas shared in a culture.

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2012

This paper will try to analyze the role played by branding communication in the "education" of the masses, on social responsibility and at a level of micro cultural trends. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the formation of symbolic meaning in brand to consumer communication starting from the concepts of brand identity and brand image. We advance the hypothesis that the meaning of brand communication depends to a large extent on the "culture" developed by a mark's symbolic functions.

Journal of Management and Training for Industries

Results from five studies demonstrate that a salient cultural identity can increase consumers' valuation of well-established identity-congruent brands. Compared to a baseline condition, consumers with a salient cultural identity were more likely to promote, to pay a higher price for a branded product, to accept a high stretch extension, and to exhibit stronger self-brand connections in the context of identity-congruent brands. These effects seem to occur rather unconsciously, triggered by fluency when processing a salient identitycongruent brand. They dissipate when consumers' attention is drawn to the source of fluency (i.e., the salient identity). Findings in this research highlight the theoretical importance of understanding the nature of a brand's connections to a consumer's identity for predicting consumer valuation of well-established brands and their leveraging actions.

Revista de Gestão, 2018

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze customers’ perceptions about brand personality in different cultural environments, checking if the archetypal framework of Mark and Pearson (2001) applies to different brands across countries. Design/methodology/approach The authors measured consumers’ perceptions in different cultural contexts through a survey, and received 537 valid questionnaires from Portugal, Brazil, Colombia and Peru, countries that have some similar indicators of cultural proximity. The authors wanted to verify if the words and sentences that respondents related to each brand were coherent with the archetype/brand, and the homogeneity of the results in different cultural contexts. Findings Empirical evidence shows that there is proximity between the literature review and the associations – words and sentences – that consumers from different countries make with those brands. This consistency of results is significantly higher for word associations. Originality/va...

Journal of Business Research, 2017

International Marketing …, 2010

Purpose -The brand management literature argues that the standardization of branding strategy across global markets leads to consistent and well-defined brand meaning. The paper aims to challenge this thesis by empirically examining whether and how global brands travel with consumers. The paper studies how consumers create brand meanings at home and abroad as well as the impact of context (e.g. place) on the meaning of global brands for the same consumers. Design/methodology/approach -The paper takes a qualitative approach to examine brand meanings for two prototypical global brands, McDonald's and Starbucks, at home and abroad. Data were collected through photo-elicited interviews, personal diaries, and essays with 29 middle-class American consumers before, during, and after a short-term trip to China. Interviews lasted from 30 to 90 minutes and the data were analyzed using a hermeneutic approach. Findings -Taking a cultural branding approach, the paper demonstrates that despite perceived standardized global brand platforms, consumers develop divergent brand meanings abroad. While at home, global brands have come to symbolize corporate excess, predatory intentions, and cultural homogenizations; abroad they evoke meanings of comfort, predictability, safety, and national pride. In foreign contexts, global brands become dwelling resources that enable travelers to sustain daily consumption rituals, evoke sensory experiences of home, as well as provide a comfortable and welcoming space. Originality/value -The paper challenges the brand management literature assumption of a consistent brand image for standardized global brands. It shows that the cultural context (e.g. place) impacts consumer-derived brand meanings even among the same group of consumers. Further, it argues that standardization offered by global brands provides an important symbolic value to mobile consumers of serving as an anchor to the home left behind.