Internal brand co-creation: the experiential brand meaning cycle in higher education

Higher education (HE) institutions need to adapt to the global environment but the complex nature of HE highlights the role of marketing and the internal market in realizing the brand identity, creating a challenge for developing a shared brand meaning. This research explores how employees co-create brand meaning through their brand experiences and social interactions with management, colleagues and customers. Using a phenomenological approach, the findings highlight that brand meaning commences from historical, superficial brand interactions. Employees then develop brand meaning further through a series of brand interactions and social interactions. Bridging the internal branding and the co-creation literature, this study conceptualizes the evolving, co-created nature of employees' brand meaning in the experiential brand meaning cycle. This study extends Iglesias and Bonet's (2012) work and illustrates the function of employees as readers and authors of brand meaning, emphasizing the crucial role of brand co-creation in guiding employees' brand promise delivery

Exploring how young consumers processing snack packaging cues from a phenomenological perspective

Obesity has become one of the most significant nutritional problems facing global populations. In the UK, the obesity rates have been on a steady rise, with young adults aged 16-24 being subject to a high risk of becoming obese (Mintel, 2013). This age group displays weaker attitudes towards healthy living than elderly people, and a strong tendency towards snacking. Kerr et al. (2008) observes an increase in snacking, snacking portions, and snacking frequency. Crisps and chocolate are some of the major energy-dense snacks that cause obesity (Astrup et al., 2006), when coupling with over consumption and lack of physical activity. One of the interventions implemented by policy makers in an attempt to encourage consumers to adopt healthy dietary choices is nutrition labelling (NL). The UK was one of the main instigators of the development of nutrition labelling within the European Community (Shine et al., 1997)

An interpretive enquiry into CEO personal branding on social media

Social media has altered the corporate communication environment. Organisations have put their CEOs on social media to build corporate brand image whilst creating a strong personal brand. However, creating a personal brand online is complicated and problematic, especially when the personal brand serves various stakeholders. While CEOs become recognised as a brand, there has been limited insight into how a CEO personal brand can be crafted and how it impacts stakeholders. Furthermore, CEOs are regarded as a core presentation of the corporate brand. Thus, it is important to understand how CEO personal brand affects the corporate brand. To address these questions, this study adopted a multi-method research, combining qualitative in-depth interviews with netnography, in an attempt to gain understanding of CEO personal brand from both CEOs’ and stakeholders’ perspectives. The findings indicate key CEO characteristics and employee involvement as pre-requisite to developing a CEO personal brand. Also, by bridging corporate branding and online personal branding literature, this study illustrates how a CEO personal brand influences corporate brand image, employee advocacy and consumer loyalty

Retailers, don't ignore me on social media! The importance of consumer-brand interactions in raising purchase intention - Privacy the Achilles heel

Effective interactions are essential for retail brands to progressively nudge consumers towards purchase. While social media provides the platform for brands to directly connect with consumers, it is critical that brands take privacy concerns seriously. This paper address common questions retailers ask: How do brands develop effective interactions with consumers on social media? Do consumer-brand interactions impact purchase intention? Does privacy matter? Through 541 UK participant responses and using social exchange theory, this research examines consumer-brand interactions on social media, focusing on how social media activities, attitudes towards social media advertising, and privacy, impact upon purchase intention. Our results show that brands must establish strong relationships through high-quality consumer-brand interactions to significantly raise purchase intentions, while also carefully managing consumers' privacy expectations. Effective privacy management positively mediates the link between social media and purchase intention but ignore privacy, and it becomes the Achilles heel of the relationship

Political brand identity: an examination of the complexities of Conservative brand and internal market engagement during the 2010 UK General Election campaign

This paper seeks to build an understanding of the importance of internal communications when building a strong political brand. Using Kapferer’s brand prism as a conceptual framework, the paper explores UK Conservative Party members’ attitudes towards the development of the Conservative brand as personified by David Cameron. There are clear implications for political strategists as the findings suggest that it is crucial to engage the internal market in the co-creation of the marketing communications strategy for as brand evangelists they interpret the brand promise at the local level

Millennial Chinese Consumers’ Perceived Destination Brand Value

There has been a substantial rise in the number of Chinese tourists, with the Chinese millennials being important influencers. Yet very little is known about their tourism behavior, particularly how their perceived destination brand values influence their destination loyalty. This study brings in the consumers’ perceived brand value concept from the branding literature to investigate Chinese millennial tourists’ destination loyalty. An online survey was adopted to collect data from 287 Chinese millennial tourists. The findings offer insight into the relative effects of five dimensions of tourists’ perceived destination brand values on their destination loyalty. The findings also extend existing tourism literature, showing the moderating effects of destination brand globality, destination status (domestic vs. international) and national brand attitude on the said relationships. Managerial implications to better target Chinese millennials are discussed together with future research directions

Social media led co-creation of knowledge in developing societies: SME’s roles in the adoption, use and appropriation of smartphones in South Asia

Social media supports the creative economy through its involvement in the adoption and appropriation of new innovation and accelerates economic growth. The current paper expands on this notion by identifying and analysing the interaction between social media-based communities and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), as it examines how social media contributes to the knowledge co-creation and supports the adoption, use and appropriation of smartphones in South Asian countries, which are inhabited by approximately 1.6 billion people. The findings obtained through virtual ethnography (VE) provide insights into the dynamics and kinetics of knowledge co-creation and how that benefits large multinationals, small local businesses and consumers in developing societies. As such, we advance the knowledge management scholarship by presenting a holistic model of co-creation of knowledge involving multiple stakeholders

A brand within a brand: an integrated understanding of internal brand management and brand architecture in the public sector

Branding in the public sector is emerging as an interesting area of research, as diverse organisations find themselves using branding principles to promote a consistent, clear brand. However, very little is known how public organisations could, or should, manage their brands. The purpose of this research, therefore, is to explore brand management processes in the public sector, and its implication for brand architecture, from an employee perspective. With a qualitative approach, the study argues that branding is important not only for the organisation, but also for individual departments. Further, unlike branding in the private sector, public organisations may be more concerned with supporting a positive perception and organisational attractiveness rather than a unique and differentiated brand. This may have implications for brand architecture. By allowing individual departments to manage their brand with support from organisational structures that provide alignment and focus, organisations can form a brand architecture that supports a strong organisational brand and employee brand commitment