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Article Contents

Introduction, the pleasure and/or pain of brands, brand attachment and loyalty, consumer relevance and distinctiveness in branding, consumer communications about brands, managerial considerations in branding, other future research directions, conclusions.

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Consumer Research Insights on Brands and Branding: A JCR Curation

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Kevin Lane Keller, Consumer Research Insights on Brands and Branding: A JCR Curation, Journal of Consumer Research , Volume 46, Issue 5, February 2020, Pages 995–1001, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucz058

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Brands are a fact of everyday life and an omnipresent reality for consumers. Understanding how consumers respond to brands—what they think and feel and how they act toward them—is a critical aspect of consumer research. Consumer research in branding is expansive in nature and has investigated a wide range of topics in terms of how different kinds of consumers respond to different types of brands and branding activities in various contexts ( Schmitt 2012 ).

Researchers have explored how consumer responses to brands vary by factors such as knowledge, experience, gender, attitudes, and cultural background. They have studied the effects of brands that vary by product or industry type, personality or other image factors, country of origin, and more. They have explored branding as applied to products or services, people, countries and other geographical locations, and the like. Different forms of marketing activity relating to various aspects of the classic marketing mix (the “4 Ps”: product, price, place, and promotion) have been assessed, and the contexts studied have included a host of situations or settings.

The pleasure and/or pain of brands

Brand attachment and loyalty

Consumer relevance and distinctiveness in branding

Consumer communications about brands

Managerial branding considerations

Despite the relatively short time period involved, these five themes exhibit some of the diversity in subject matter characteristic of branding research. Some of these themes tap into broader interests in consumer research that also can be found in research streams outside of branding. Others capture phenomena wholly unique to the branding area. All themes reflect conceptual rigor and practical relevance. For each theme, we provide some background and highlight the findings of two recent JCR articles, one of which we describe in more detail in the form of its abstract and discussion of its future research implications. We conclude with commentary on other future research directions for brands and branding.

In theory, brands can play many different roles for consumers. In a basic sense, brands can make consumer lives simpler, easier, or more rewarding. Moreover, brands can take on rich meaning and allow consumers to signal to others, or themselves, who they are or who they would like to be and what they value. Yet not all consumers ascribe to the positive qualities of brands, and some consumers actively dislike brands and branding in general. Understanding the basic forces—positive and negative—associated with brands is an enduring consumer research priority.

Recent JCR Research

Reimann, Nuñez, and Castaño (2017) show the remarkable power of brands to insulate consumers from physical pain. Brands allow consumers to cope with pain by offering them a reassuring sense of social connectedness. On the other hand, Brick et al. (2018) show the yin-yang of brands in one of the most important aspects of consumers’ lives: their relationship with close others. They find that brands can also be a source of conflict, as summarized in their abstract below.

Brick et al., “Coke vs. Pepsi: Brand Compatibility, Relationship Power, and Life Satisfaction”   (2018) Individuals often evaluate, purchase, and consume brands in the presence of others, including close others. Yet relatively little is known about the role brand preferences play in relationships. In the present research, the authors explore how the novel concept of brand compatibility, defined as the extent to which individuals have similar brand preferences (e.g., both partners prefer the same brand of soda), influences life satisfaction. The authors propose that when brand compatibility is high, life satisfaction will also be high. Conversely, because low brand compatibility may be a source of conflict for the relationship, the authors propose that it will be associated with reduced life satisfaction. Importantly, the authors predict that the effects of brand compatibility on conflict and life satisfaction will depend upon relationship power. Across multiple studies and methodologies, including experimental designs (studies 2, 3, 5) and dyadic data from real-life couples (studies 1, 4, 6), the authors test and find support for their hypotheses. By exploring how a potentially unique form of compatibility influences life satisfaction, including identifying a key moderator and an underlying mechanism, the current research contributes to the literatures on branding, close relationships, consumer well-being, and relationship power.

Several aspects of this research are noteworthy. One crucial consideration, building on past research and worthy of further study, is how brands are embedded in consumer lives and part of their identities in profound ways. Additionally, this research reinforces one of the most central considerations in branding—compatibility, or “fit”—which manifests in different ways with many different branding phenomena (e.g., brand extensions, leveraged secondary associations from cause marketing or sponsorship). Finally, another valuable insight suggested by this research is the polarization that can occur with brands; that is, the same brand can elicit decidedly different responses from different people. Greater attention to the downside of brands and branding and their more detrimental effects with certain consumers is needed.

Not all brands have the same importance to consumers, and understanding why some brands take on special meaning has much theoretical and managerial importance. In a practical sense, in today’s intensely competitive marketplace, firms are going to greater and greater lengths to try to forge strong bonds with consumers and build mutually beneficial relationships. Understanding consumer-brand relationships has been a fertile research topic for years now as the complexity of those relationships continues to spawn intriguing and productive new research directions.

Khamitov, Wang, and Thomson (2019) offer a comprehensive meta-analysis of factors affecting when and how different types of brand relationships increase loyalty. The authors find that various brand, loyalty, time, and consumer characteristics all can affect brand relationship elasticity. They specifically reinforce the power of the intangible and emotional qualities of brands. Huang, Huang, and Wyer (2018) home in on a very specific consideration—how consumers connect with brands in crowded social settings, as summarized in their abstract.

Huang et al., “The Influence of Social Crowding on Brand Attachment”   (2018) Feeling crowded in a shopping environment can decrease consumers’ evaluations of a product or service and lower customer satisfaction. However, the present research suggests that a crowded environment can sometimes have a positive impact on consumer behavior. Although feeling crowded motivates consumers to avoid interacting with others, it leads them to become more attached to brands as an alternative way of maintaining their basic need for belongingness. The effect does not occur (a) when the crowding environment is composed of familiar people (and, therefore, is not considered aversive); (b) when individuals have an interdependent self-construal (and consequently, high tolerance for crowdedness); (c) when people are accompanied by friends in the crowded environment; (d) when the social function of the brands is made salient; (e) when people have never used the brand before; or (f) when the brand is referred to as a general product rather than a specific brand.

Understanding situational and contextual influences on consumer behavior with respect to brands offers much practical value to marketing managers who must make many different types of decisions based on assumptions about how consumers will behave in particular places or at particular times. Identifying boundary conditions in these and other ways is important to provide a more nuanced depiction of how consumers actually think, feel, and act toward brands under certain circumstances or in specific settings. Finally, more generally, this research underscores the contingent nature of consumer processing of brands and the need to thoroughly investigate moderator variables that can impact the direction and strength of branding effects in meaningful ways.

Distinctiveness is at the core of branding and a key element in virtually any definition of brands. Branding success is all about differentiation and offering consumers unique value. Unique value requires relevance, too; accordingly, another core branding concept is brand relevance and how meaningful a brand is to consumers. Ensuring that brands are relevant and differentiated, however, is a challenging managerial priority in today’s fluid and fast-changing marketplace. Consumers are also seeking relevance and differentiation and consequently demanding personalized, customized brand offerings that suit their individual preferences and distinguish them from others. In part because of these new dynamics, many important consumer research opportunities are emerging in how consumers and brands fit into their respective landscapes.

Torelli et al. (2017) show how consumer feelings of cultural distinctiveness in foreign locations can lead to consumer preferences for more culturally aligned brands, even if those brands may be deficient in other ways. In a desire to connect with home and not feel as distinctive, consumers broaden how they actually think of “home.” By expanding their in-group boundaries in that way, they exhibit preferences to include culturally related brands that are merely similar in geographic proximity or sociohistorical or cultural roots. Puzakova and Aggarwal (2018) show how a consumer desire for distinctiveness can actually result in less preference for an anthropomorphized brand, as summarized in their abstract.

Puzakova and Aggarwal, “Brands as Rivals: Consumer Pursuit of Distinctiveness and the Role of Brand Anthropomorphism”   (2018) Although past research has shown that anthropomorphism enhances consumers’ attraction to a brand when social-connectedness or effectance motives are active, the current research demonstrates that anthropomorphizing a brand becomes a detrimental marketing strategy when consumers’ distinctiveness motives are salient. Four studies show that anthropomorphizing a brand positioned to be distinctive diminishes consumers’ sense of agency in identity expression. As a result, when distinctiveness goals are salient, consumers are less likely to evaluate anthropomorphized (vs. nonanthropomorphized) brands favorably and are less likely to choose them to express distinctiveness. This negative effect of brand anthropomorphism, however, is contingent on the brand’s positioning strategy—brand-as-supporter (supporting consumers’ desires to be different) versus brand-as-agent (communicating unique brand features instead of focusing on consumers’ needs) versus brand-as-controller (limiting consumers’ freedom in expressing distinctiveness). Our results demonstrate that an anthropomorphized brand-as-supporter enhances consumers’ sense of agency in identity expression, compared to both an anthropomorphized brand-as-agent and an anthropomorphized brand-as-controller. In turn, enhancing or thwarting consumers’ sense of agency in expressing their differences from others drives the differential impact of anthropomorphizing a brand positioned to be distinctive.

Two aspects of this research are especially noteworthy in terms of future research. Given how many marketers are trying to bring their brands to life—literally and figuratively—in today’s digital world, anthropomorphism is likely to continue to be an important consumer research topic. In particular, AI and robotic advances in service settings and elsewhere will raise a number of similar issues in terms of how consumers interact with more human-like marketing devices. These are complex phenomena that will require new theoretical development as well as the careful adaption of concepts from consumer psychology originally developed with humans. Secondly, understanding how consumers and brands are—or want to be—distinctive is a fundamental element of branding that can yield interesting insights with a variety of branding phenomena.

Communications are the lifeblood of any brand. In a “paid-earned-owned-shared” media world, consumer-to-consumer communications are taking on increased importance. Different communication channels have different properties, however, that require careful analysis and planning. Understanding what, when, where, how, and why consumers decide to share information or opinions about brands is a research priority that will likely continue to drive research activity for many years to come.

Through an extensive text mining study of social media, Villarroel Ordenes et al. (2019) use speech act theory to identify distinct elements—rhetorical styles such as alliteration and repetition, cross-message compositions, and certain visual images—that lead to greater consumer sharing of messages posted by brands. They reinforce the power of informational and emotional content in online brand messages and find some important distinctions in message sharing across Facebook and Twitter social media platforms. Moving to also include the offline world, Shen and Sengupta (2018) found that when consumers communicate about brands to others by speaking versus writing, they develop deeper self-brand connections, as summarized in this abstract.

Shen and Sengupta, “Word of Mouth versus Word of Mouse: Speaking about a Brand Connects You to It More than Writing Does”   (2018) This research merges insights from the communications literature with that on the self-brand connection to examine a novel question: how does speaking versus writing about a liked brand influence the communicator’s own later reactions to that brand? Our conceptualization argues that because oral communication involves a greater focus on social interaction with the communication recipient than does written communication, oral communicators are more likely to express self-related thoughts than are writers, thereby increasing their self-brand connection (SBC). We also assess the implications of this conceptualization, including the identification of theoretically derived boundary conditions for the speech/writing difference, and the downstream effects of heightened SBC. Results from five studies provide support for our predictions, informing both the basic literature on communications, and the body of work on consumer word of mouth.

Word of mouth has been a critical aspect of marketing since the origin of commerce. In today’s digital world, word of mouth can take many different forms (structured vs. unstructured, public vs. private, and so on). Understanding the full consumer psychology implications of reviews, in particular, is a top research priority given their increasingly important role in consumer decision-making. Contrasting oral and written speech, as in the referenced article, will have important implications for social media usage and marketing communications more generally. Lastly, the crucial mediating role of self-brand connections reinforces the need to consider the relevance of brands and when and how they are drawn into consumers’ identities and lives.

There is a managerial side to branding that can benefit from principles and insights gleaned from more practically minded consumer research. Managers make numerous decisions on a daily basis related to building, measuring, managing, and protecting their brands with significant short- and long-term consequences. A thorough understanding of applicable consumer behavior theory is extremely valuable to guide that decision-making. The research opportunities here are vast, as a wide gap still exists in many areas between academic research and industry practice.

Studying the James Bond film franchise, Preece, Kerrigan, and O'Reilly (2019) take an evolutionary approach to study brand longevity. Applying assemblage theory, they show how brands can optimally balance continuity and change at different levels over time. van Horen and Pieters (2017) show how copycat brands—that is, those that imitate brand elements of another brand—meet with more success when the imitated product is in a product category distinct from that of the imitated brand, as summarized in their abstract.

van Horen and   Pieters, “Redefining Home: How Cultural Distinctiveness Affects the Malleability of In-Group Boundaries and Brand Preferences”   (2017) Copycat brands imitate the trade dress of other brands, such as their brand name, logo, and packaging design. Copycats typically operate in the core product category of the imitated brand under the assumption that such “in-category imitation” is most effective. In contrast, four experiments demonstrate the benefits of “out-of-category imitation” for copycats, and the harmful effect on the imitated brand. Copycats are evaluated more positively in a related category, because consumers appraise the similarity between copycat and imitated brand more positively than in the core category, independent of the perceived similarity itself. This is due to a reduced salience of norms regarding imitation in the related category. Moreover, the results show a damaging backlash effect of out-of-category imitation on the general evaluation of the imitated brand and on its key perceived product attributes. The findings replicate across student, MTurk [Amazon Mechanical Turk], and representative consumer samples; multiple product categories; and forms of brand imitation. This research demonstrates that out-of-category brand imitation helps copycat brands and hurts national leading brands much more than has so far been considered, which has managerial and public policy implications.

Research on trade dress goes to the very heart of brands and branding: the brand elements themselves. Because of how they shape awareness and image with consumers, brand elements are often invaluable assets to brand marketers. A deeper understanding of their intrinsic properties, as well as their interface with various marketing activities, would be very helpful for managers. More generally, adopting a legal perspective to branding research, as with this article, should be encouraged given its increasingly significant role in managerial decision-making. In a related sense, given that most brands span multiple categories, ensuring that a broader multicategory perspective is recognized in branding research is also essential.

The five themes reviewed above each suggested a number of important future research directions. Nevertheless, an abundance of other research opportunities also exist in other areas with brands and branding, five of which are highlighted here (for further discussion, see Keller 2016 ; Keller et al. 2020 ).

Brand Emotions and Feelings

What are the most important types of brand feelings and emotions? What is a useful taxonomy of brand feelings and emotions?

What are the most effective ways for marketers to elicit brand feelings and emotions? How do different marketing activities create brand feelings and emotions?

Can affective information be shared by consumers as effectively as more cognitive information? What is the role of word of mouth and social media for spreading feelings and emotional qualities of brands across consumers?

How easily can feelings and emotions be linked to a brand? In what ways are they stored and later activated?

In what ways do feelings and emotions affect consumer decision-making? When can positive brand feelings overcome product deficiencies? When can negative feelings undermine product advantages?

Brand Intangibles

As noted above, successful branding is about differentiation. Increasingly, brand intangibles are playing a bigger role in creating, or at least strengthening, differentiation. Brand intangibles are those associations to a brand that are not directly related to the product or service and its function and performance. In a broad sense, the increased emphasis on brand intangibles reflects the fact that consumers have become more interested in learning about the people and companies behind products and brands, posing questions such as: Who are they? What values do they hold? What do they stand for? How do they make the product or service?

How do consumers form opinions about authenticity ( Newman and Dhar 2014 ; Spiggle, Nguyen, and Caravella 2012 )? How important is it for a brand to be seen as authentic or genuine?

How does history or heritage define a brand ( Paharia et al. 2011 )? In what ways can it help or hurt? How flexible are consumers in updating their perceptions and beliefs about brands? What is the proper balance of continuity and change for brands over time?

How do consumers view political stances by brands ( Horst 2018 )? How do they respond to brands taking positions on important political issues that support or contradict the positions they hold?

What are consumer expectations for corporate social responsibility for brands ( Bhattacharya and Sen 2003 ; Chernev and Blair 2015 ; Kotler and Lee 2005 ; Torelli, Monga, and Kaikati 2012 )? What are the accepted standards for sustainability, community involvement, and social impact? How do consumers make those judgments? How do they influence brand attitudes and behavior?

Given the subjective nature of brand intangibles, how do marketers reconcile the potentially varying or even contradictory opinions held by different consumers about any particular brand intangible? How much consensus can reasonably be expected?

Brand Positioning

One well-established strategic tool for branding is the concept of positioning —how consumers think or feel about a brand versus a defined set of competitor brands ( Keller, Sternthal, and Tybout 2002 ). Although historically significant, some marketers have questioned the value of traditional positioning in developing modern marketing strategies. One fundamental question is the role of consumers in setting strategies for brands. Some marketing pundits proclaim that “customers are now in charge of marketing,” maintaining that consumers now set the strategic directions of brands. Such statements, however, presume that consumers are empowered, enlightened, and engaged with respect to brands and branding. In other words, consumers have the motivation (engagement), ability (enlightenment), and opportunity (empowerment) to actually impact brand strategies.

In what ways do consumers think they can influence brand strategy? How much input do consumers think they should have about what a brand does?

How much do consumers know about brands and branding? How deep and broad is consumer brand knowledge? How do they define the “rules of the game” for branding?

How actively invested are consumers with a brand’s fortunes? How much do consumers care about how other consumers view a brand or how it is performing in the marketplace as a whole?

How much do consumers want to engage with brands and in what ways? What is a useful taxonomy of brand engagement?

Developing a more complete understanding of the consumer-brand terrain along these lines will be invaluable in understanding how different types of relationships are formed between consumers and brands ( Fournier 1998 ).

Brand Purpose, Storytelling, and Narratives

How well do these alternative brand strategy concepts tap into our understanding of consumer behavior? What assumptions do they make about consumer behavior? When are they most valid or useful? Are they ever unhelpful or even counterproductive?

What types of brand purposes are most meaningful to consumers? How should brand purposes be crafted internally and expressed externally? How should brand purpose relate or be aligned with other aspects of the brand positioning and strategy? For example, how closely tied should brand purposes be to the products or services for the brand?

What makes brand stories or narratives compelling ( Escalas 2004 )? Are there any disadvantages to their use? Can brand stories or narratives distract marketers or consumers from a focus on potentially more important product or service performance considerations?

Brand Measurement

Lastly, for both academics and managers to fully understand the effects of brands and branding, there needs to be a deep, rich understanding of how consumers think, feel, and act toward brands. Although one common industry research technique has been consumer surveys, as consumers have become more difficult to contact and less willing to participate, the viability of surveys has diminished in recent years. Yet marketers today arguably need to stay closer than ever to consumers, underscoring the need to develop new methods and evolve existing ones to gain critical insights into consumers and brands.

Fortunately, as much as any area, branding research has benefited from a full range of quantitative and qualitative methods that go beyond surveys and other traditional data collection methods (e.g., focus groups). For example, researchers are continuing to refine neural techniques (Chang, Boksem, and Smidts 2018; Yoon et al. 2006 ) and ethnographic methods ( Belk 2006 ; Chang Coupland 2005 ). One particularly promising tack involves digital methods and measures that can be used at the individual or market level to monitor online behavior ( Berger et al. 2020 ; Moe and Schweidel 2014 ; Yadav and Pavlou 2014 ). Although full of potential, the methodological properties of these digital approaches need to be validated carefully, and boundaries need to be established as to their comparative advantages and disadvantages.

More broadly, for all traditional or emerging research methods, strengths and weaknesses must be identified and contrasted in terms of their effectiveness and efficiency in gaining consumer and brand insights. In many ways, brand-building can be thought of in terms of painting a picture of a brand in consumers’ minds and hearts. Extending that metaphor, it is important that marketers skillfully combine a full range of research methods to be able to appreciate the colors, vividness, and texture of the mental images and structures they are creating.

Perhaps not surprisingly, research on branding mirrors many of the broad themes found in consumer research more generally. Consumer researchers of all kinds are interested in achieving a better understanding of consumer motivations and desires and how consumers choose to interact with the world around them, especially in digital terms. Researchers studying branding have certainly homed in on these and other topics and also have focused on more managerial considerations, all of which help marketers achieve a deeper understanding of consumers to help them build, measure, manage, and protect brand equity.

The reality is that brands and consumers are inextricably linked. Brands exist for consumers, and consumers generally value brands. Yet, in today’s data-rich world, both brands and consumers can be too easily reduced to online and offline statistical footprints. It is incumbent upon consumer researchers to breathe life into branding to ensure that consumer psychology as applied to branding is undeniable in its importance and essential to marketers everywhere.

This curation was invited by editors J. Jeffrey Inman, Margaret C. Campbell, Amna Kirmani, and Linda L. Price .

The author thanks the editors for the opportunity to write this research curation and for their helpful feedback.

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Market brand equity: lost in terminology and techniques?

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Brand love and positive word of mouth: the moderating effects of experience and price

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Brand management and sustainability: exploring potential for the transformative power of brands

• Published: 20 October 2022
• Volume 29 , pages 513–519, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Urša Golob 1 ,
• Mario Burghausen 2 ,
• Joachim Kernstock 3 &
• Mark A. P. Davies 4  

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The aim of this Special Edition of six papers is to advance our knowledge of the role that brands can adopt in meeting various objectives of sustainability. Each article advances important insights on complementary aspects of sustainability and branding which we frame around a capabilities framework that reflects the dynamic need to meet shifting societal expectations. Specifically, the papers highlight the need to critically research, understand and communicate effectively to key audiences before investing in sustainability or corporate social responsibility (CSR). Each of the papers represents one or more capabilities. The first capability represents achieving a relevant brand fit of values—whether via green environmentalism, via establishing corporate brand impressions, or through adopting types of CSR whose effectiveness might vary between luxury and mass-market brands. The second capability represents acquiring sensitivity to worldview beliefs or through careful framing of CSR that can impact differentially on commitment and brand attitudes. The third capability represents alignment of stakeholder values through collaboration. Finally, we suggest future research directions of sustainable brand practices, including studies into the internal capabilities of brands and how different groups of stakeholders might interact with brands.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Sustainability, often referred to as the new megatrend in business, has become a big concern in organisational life as companies consider how to incorporate environmental, social and cultural value creation into their mission and operations (Porter and Derry 2012 ). This consideration was triggered by the need for all stakeholders to work together to solve the 'wicked problems' of our time (Palakshappa and Dodds 2021 ). Sustainability concerns 'the dynamic, cyclical, and interdependent nature of all parts and pieces of life on earth' and finding a 'durable yet dynamic equilibrium' in ecological, social, cultural and economic terms through our response 'to the urgent planetary challenges we all face, a response that includes emerging professional opportunities' (Robertson 2014 , 3). This calls for a transformational shift towards sustainable consumption and production, with marketing in general, and brand management in particular, increasingly central to these considerations. While some experts believe that branding is no longer as relevant as it once was in the face of rapid technological, market and societal change, others believe that brands continue to have a significant impact—not only on markets, but also on society today (Campbell and Price 2021 ). At the corporate level, stakeholders - and consumers in particular - expect brand managers to bring about change and reconnect business and society - and this is more pronounced than ever before (Porter and Kramer 2011 ).

The changing demand for sustainable consumption and production presents both challenges and opportunities for marketing practitioners and brand managers faced with the demands of sustainable innovation and the search for sustainable brands (Nedergaard and Gyrd-Jones 2013 ). This applies to brands not only in terms of producing sustainable products (goods and services) and incorporating social-ecological criteria, but also in terms of promoting sustainable lifestyles and behavioural change, including through critical reflection and transformation of existing norms (Kemper and Ballantine 2019 ). Brand management should have much to offer in the quest for sustainable systemic change and practice. Research that considers sustainability-related brand management from different perspectives can offer new insights and potentially innovative and creative ways to encourage and support more sustainable brand and consumption practices.

With this Special Issue, we want to explore the challenges and opportunities for brands and brand management in the context of current sustainability issues. The number of scientific publications dealing with the topics of 'sustainability' and 'branding' has increased rapidly in recent years. For example, the Scopus database shows that the number of published papers concerning sustainability with a branding focus was almost 100 publications in 2021. Our selection of articles in this Issue, with their interesting research explorations on sustainability topics, contributes to the growing debate on how brand managers might facilitate social and environmental aspects in their branding and promote sustainable change.

Sustainability, marketing and branding

Sustainability as a concept and orientation has been anchored in marketing for many decades. As early as the 1970s, scholars such as Drucker ( 1986 [1973]) and Sweeney ( 1972 ) recognised that marketing should play a broader role in sustainability by considering social and environmental issues and either seeking to prevent harm to the environment and society or to increase 'the good' for the great majority. There are different streams of research that deal with sustainability in marketing, taking different perspectives. One stream is concerned with the so-called 'business case' of sustainability and explores how integrating sustainability can have a significant impact on marketing assets. For example, researchers are interested in how green marketing initiatives or corporate social responsibility (CSR) can influence consumer response, create competitive advantage and enhance corporate and brand value (e.g. Luo and Bhattacharya 2006 ; Peloza et al. 2012 ; Porter and Kramer 2011 ). Other researchers adopt a systems perspective. They argue that dyadic interactions, activities and decisions of stakeholders at the micro-level tend to aggregate into broader, societal complexities (Padela et al. 2021 ) and call for new, restructured perspectives on sustainable marketing (and branding) that would contribute to transformative social change (e.g. Spry et al. 2021 ; Varey 2010 ).

The role of brands and branding in sustainability

Sustainable marketing approaches based on a systems view go hand in hand with the newer definition of branding and brand management that goes beyond the managerial and unidirectional view of brand management that is internal, firm-centric and controlled by the organisation (Brodie et al. 2017 ). This newer perspective on branding thus surpasses the corporate urge to control and manage brands for the sake of maximising brand value, profits and building the 'business case' (ibid.). It is well captured in a definition of brands as 'semiotic marketing systems that generate value for direct and indirect participants, society, and the broader environment, through the exchange of co-created meaning' (Conejo and Wooliscroft 2015 , 287). In short, brands represent a key 'vehicle of meaning that emerge from social interaction between the company and its environment' (Melewar et al. 2012 , 601), with brands acting in 'conjunction with their consumers and other actors to achieve collective benefits' (Brodie et al. 2017 , 188). As a result, brands have an arresting potential in the understanding of stakeholders; they guide their experiences, actions and future expectations and create a context for decisions, both transactional (whether to interact or not) and relational (whether to trust or not) (Kitchin 2005 ). This implies a different logic of how brand values are established and communicated. Brand values are becoming more diverse and go beyond the direct control and one-way communication of the firms to include the potential sustainability-related expectations of stakeholders (Conejo and Wooliscroft 2015 ). Consequently, such a view of brand management leads to companies taking on the role of facilitators with managing brands in a way that triggers their social mechanisms (Padela et al. 2021 ).

In parallel with this evolution of branding to include the social impact of branding, branding research and practice have given increasing importance to sustainability and CSR (e.g. Golob and Podnar 2019 ; Maon et al. 2021 ). Although an understanding of sustainable branding has yet to mature as an academic subject, it has become a dominant concept in modern business discourse (Forudi and Palazzo 2021 ). There are several theoretical approaches to the study of brand sustainability, and one that has rarely been used to examine sustainability strategies from a marketing perspective (Voola et al. 2022 ), but seems quite appropriate, is the (dynamic) capabilities approach. It helps us to understand the social role of the brand and its importance to the marketing organisation (Brodie et al. 2017 ). The capabilities approach can be aligned with the principles of sustainability to promote brand sustainability learning (Kitchin 2005 ).

Our reading of the accepted articles for this Special Issue has identified several sustainability principles (Kitchin 2005 ) that are relevant to brand management to ensure that brands continue to have valuable (sustainable) meanings for stakeholders. We have chosen to use the sustainability-related brand-learning capabilities introduced by Kitchin ( 2005 ) to interpret the core themes prevailing from the articles. We have structured the discussion of each article in this Special Issue in terms of these capabilities (see Fig.  1 ) with the goal of capturing the potential of sustainable branding and opening up questions for further investigation.

Sustainable brand-learning capabilities (authors' own representation based on Kitchin 2005 )

Articles in this Special Issue

This Special Edition of six papers responds to the challenges and opportunities for brand managers to cultivate and communicate sustainable brand practices. These six papers effectively share a dynamic capabilities framework of sustainable branding that acknowledges that brand managers have a societal role to play in exploiting valuable meanings with their stakeholders through learning capabilities. These papers reveal how brand managers can meet shifting societal expectations, cultivate closer relations, develop relevant values and encourage collaboration. The first paper, sampling German fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands, using a series of interviews, explores the need for brand managers to be sensitive towards consumer feelings to ensure a receptive value fit when implementing green brand extension strategies, especially those with a higher environmental involvement. The second paper shows how brand managers can achieve closer sensitivity with their customers by drawing on their worldview beliefs apart from their sceptical traits. The third paper investigates how corporate brand impressions can convey relevant, sustainable brand values, acting as mediators between perceptions of CSR activity and purchase intentions over a cross section of business sectors. The fourth paper’s focus uses experimentation of luxury brands to show how reactions towards embedded and peripheral CSR can differ between luxury and mass-market brands, highlighting the need to ensure relevant brand fit. The authors assert that more visible CSR activities might be more appropriate for appealing to a luxury client base. The fifth paper encourages collaboration by placing employees at the heart of sustainable brand co-creation collaboration. A corporate brand’s CSR philosophy is revealed through their voluntary activities that are examined longitudinally through narratives. Managerial direction reveals the tensions in achieving alignment of CSR values in the co-creation process.

And finally, the sixth paper examines how the values-based framing of CSR messages can impact differentially on consumer scepticism, commitment and brand attitudes according to different types of consumers, underlying the need to know your audience before investing in CSR.

The article Practices of brand extensions and how consumers respond to FMCG giants’ greening attempts by Andreas Hesse, Karolin Bündgen, Saskia Claren, and Sarah Frank explores the 'green' brand extension practices of large FMCG brands in Germany and how consumers interpret them. There is a noticeable growth in brand extensions that feature and proclaim sustainability credentials seeking to meet the demand for sustainable products by certain consumers as well as hoping to positively affect the brand image of the parent brand. Based on a three-stage qualitative study of branding activities and consumer perceptions of ‘green' brand extensions by FMCG brands in Germany, the authors identify three specific characteristics of green brand extensions used by FMCG brands in addition to established brand extension characteristics (e.g. quality and expertise of parent brand). They show that 'green' brand extensions focus much less on the transfer from the parent brand's original concept but stress (1) general environmental benefits (e.g. reduced pollution and waste), (2) individual consumer benefits (e.g. health claims), and (3) benefits based on market trends (e.g. organic, vegan). They also evidence that these are accompanied by the extensive use of eco-labelling (internally and externally certified/validated) referring to sustainable production processes, supply chains, geographic origin, ingredients and/or recycling. These practices by larger FMCG brands tend to be met by consumers with a high level of scepticism, and their study indicates that corporate size and a negative corporate reputation are important factors that contribute to a transfer of negative characteristics from the parent brand to its 'green' extension. They find that consumer concerns about the parent brand are more prevalent than the potential for a transfer of positive characteristics from a green brand extension to a parent brand. This general scepticism was linked to an interplay between consumers' parent brand knowledge, brand experience and their environmental involvement.

An important insight of this study is that tactical brand extensions, which feature sustainability claims and credentials without a fundamental change in the underlying business model for the entire corporation, may have a rather more limited effect on consumers in mature markets with high sustainability awareness in terms of image transfer and reputation building. On the contrary, this exploratory study suggests that a tactical and purely instrumental approach to sustainability branding can have detrimental effects triggering consumer scepticism towards the parent brand as well as the brand extension itself. In other words, sustainable branding is a strategic issue and should not be reduced to a tactical tool used for a few product lines or specific market segments only. It requires organisational agility and a willingness to change the entire value creation process of a company in a sustainable fashion so that the corporate brand and all its product brands fit the set of values that a growing number of consumers in developed markets expect. This requires a higher level of sensitivity towards market and consumer expectations that tend to increase with knowledge of and involvement with sustainability issues. More involved and knowledgeable consumers tend to be more demanding and sceptical regarding sustainability claims made by corporations.

The article Understanding worldview beliefs to allay scepticism toward CSR advertising by Robert Magee bridges the very well-known scepticism towards corporate CSR activities to consumers' basic worldview beliefs. Understanding these worldview beliefs becomes a precondition of CSR advertising, following the argumentation in this study. The first major result demonstrates that addressing consumers' worldview beliefs in brand CSR communication can offset the influence of their trait scepticism towards CSR-driven messages. The second major result provides evidence that worldview beliefs are independent from trait scepticism, especially when influencing brand attitudes or predicting the value fit of brands. These results add significantly to the work on CSR theory and CSR communication. But not only adding to theory, this article by Magee provides guidance for management practice when shaping up CSR communication, CSR advertising and CSR activities. Considering consumers worldview beliefs from the very beginning could lead to more successful CSR advertising in specific, and, more outlooking with a general view, to brand value itself.

Petar Gidaković, Mateja Kos Koklič, Mila Zečević, and Vesna Žabkar in their article The influence of brand sustainability on purchase intentions: the mediating role of brand impressions and brand attitudes investigate how perceptions of corporate sustainability activities influence the formation of corporate brand impressions with a positive effect on favourable brand attitudes and purchase intentions. By adopting a micro-level perspective on brand sustainability they conducted a quantitative study of Central European consumers and their impressions of the sustainability credentials of nine corporate brands from that region operating in different industries. The survey of 441 consumers conducted with the support of a commercial market research firm reveals that the indirect positive effect of perceived brand sustainability on purchase intentions is mediated by brand impressions and attitudes towards a brand. More specifically, they show that brand impressions and attitudes are complementary mediators, which means that consumers’ beliefs about a company’s sustainability activities also directly affect the consumers’ behavioural intentions. Brand warmth, brand competence, and brand morality are key dimensions of consumers’ brand impressions with that effect.

This article by Gidaković and colleagues makes an important contribution to the literature on brand sustainability advancing our understanding of micro-level effects and behavioural outcomes. It is noteworthy that they demonstrate not only a positive indirect effect of consumer-perceived brand sustainability activities via brand impressions but also that brand impressions and brand attitudes are complementary mediators with perceived brand sustainability also having a direct effect on behavioural outcomes. Thus, the study suggests that consumers' perceived brand sustainability significantly influences purchase intentions via brand impressions and brand attitudes. The results show that companies ought to promote and communicate the sustainability of their brand supported by sustainable behaviour. This then assures a high-value fit in relationships with consumers with a positive impact on the brand and its perceived relevance for consumers leading to positive behavioural outcomes too. It is important to note that corporate brands to maximise positive consumer effects and behavioural outcomes ought to communicate their sustainability efforts in conjunction with highlighting other supportive traits such as warmth (e.g. genuineness of sustainability efforts), competence (e.g. ability re-sustainability efforts), and most importantly morality (e.g. value-based sustainability efforts).

In the article Luxurious and responsible? Consumer perceptions of corporate social responsibility efforts by luxury versus mass-market brands , author Marlene Vock raises the question of luxury brands' market sensitivity towards CSR and sustainability adoption, contributing to the sparse literature on responsible luxury. The starting point of the article is the rather contradictory finding in the current literature on the impact of CSR and sustainability on the perception of luxury brands. Two experimental studies are used to investigate how two variants of CSR practices—embedded and peripheral—influence consumers' attitudes towards luxury brands compared to mass-market brands. The results show that CSR activities neither improve nor worsen perceptions of luxury brands, suggesting that the 'CSR-luxury paradox' found in previous studies may be a false dilemma. They also show that consumers are generally less concerned about potential quality issues when it comes to sustainable materials used by luxury brands. However, compared to mass-market brands, embedded CSR evokes significantly lower attitudes towards luxury brands—an effect driven by perceptions of image fit. It is noteworthy that peripheral CSR elicits similar results for both types of brands, suggesting that luxury brands should not forgo externally visible sustainability practices.

An important insight of this article from a brand sustainability perspective is that while sensitivity to changing contexts is extremely important for all types of brands, including those in the luxury industry, this sensitivity must be balanced with other principles of brand sustainability. In this sense, the article particularly emphasises the need for values fit and brand relevance. The findings of the studies in this article suggest that how sustainable brand values are reinforced is important—peripheral CSR and sustainable activities that are more visible to consumers seem to be a good starting point for luxury brands to begin conversations with consumers about value shaping. The results also suggest that the more visible activities, such as philanthropic actions or the introduction of recycled and sustainable materials, are the ones that luxury brands can reach out to and that are most relevant to their customers.

The Brand Manager as Practical Author. An empirical study of the co-creation of a CSR-based brand by Heidi Hansen, Astrid Jensen and Cindie Maagaard examines the role of employees in sustainable brand management, focussing on the sustainability principle of stakeholder collaboration. The article's perspective is aligned with recent approaches to brand management that place stakeholders (employees) at the centre of sustainable brand co-creation. Drawing on data collected through a longitudinal case study, the article shows how employee volunteering activities are used to communicate the corporate brand's CSR philosophy and how employees are invited to co-create the discursive brand space. The authors use the narratives of managers and employees to also shed light on the tensions between employee co-creation of a sustainable brand and attempts to control and direct the branding process by favouring certain CSR or sustainability discourses over others.

In addition to considering the importance of the alignment of values—in this case, CSR values that come from employees' personal stories and are often transformed into brand value discourse in the process of co-creation—and the relevance of these values for corporate brand representation, this research encourages us to consider the meaning and importance of stakeholder collaboration for sustainability branding. These specific considerations include how this stakeholder (employee) collaboration towards sustainability can be fostered by the brand, whether and how the brand is willing to take on the role of true facilitator in the brand sustainability process, and the extent to which authoritative power and control are restricted to ensure true co-creation.

Edvin Love, Tejvir Sekhon and Tara Salinas present in their article Do well, do good, and know your audience: The double-edged sword of values-based CSR communication three experimental studies to show that framing CSR messages in values-based terms ('It is our duty to engage in this CSR initiative') enhances consumers’ brand attitudes by increasing perceived moralization and perceived commitment to the initiative. They show that this effect is reversed for highly formalistic consumers (those motivated by the duty to follow values, principles and rules) who are opposed to the CSR initiative. This article is one of two in this Issue which focus on consumers’ attitudes in order to enhance the success of CSR activities (see also Magee in this Issue). This is the first paper to establish the link between values-based CSR communication, perceived moralization, perceived commitment, and brand attitudes. For the development of CSR theory, this article builds on—and brings together—the research streams on CSR communication and consumer ethical systems. For management practice, the results of the studies by Edvin Love et al. (in this Issue) show that values-based framing of CSR is a high-return strategy for brands in terms of improved brand attitudes. Nevertheless, and this is a relevant result, it is also a high-risk strategy for CSR managers targeting highly formalistic consumers.

Conclusions and agenda for future research

This Special Issue of the Journal of Brand Management presents the latest scholarly thinking and advances research insights on the territory. Taken together, the articles included here represent the vibrancy, diversity and plurality of sustainability and branding as a pertinent and timely research area, which has importance for branding practitioners and policy-makers alike. Individually, each article advances important insights on different but overall complementary aspects of sustainability and branding. Each article enriches our understanding of the area and has relevance for scholarship and branding practice.

We have chosen to look at the articles in this Special Issue through the lens of the capabilities approach, which brings an outside-in perspective to the forefront and forces brands to be sensitive and attuned to their external environment (Voora et al. 2022 ). Most of the articles in this Special Issue have clearly demonstrated the importance of such sensitivity by exploring the changes in consumer expectations and demands regarding sustainability issues. Most of the articles also show an awareness that this is only the first step on the road to the future of sustainable brands. As suggested by Kitchin ( 2005 ) and based on the findings from the contributions in this Special Issue, brand managers need to use other brand capabilities to effectively address the pressing sustainability issues and show how these capabilities can be used in developing sustainable brand practices. For example, the article by Hesse et al. in this Special Issue shows how organisational agility must be rooted in the understanding that sustainable branding is a strategic issue and must not be reduced to a tactical tool. Furthermore, Hanssen et al. in this Special Issue show that stakeholder engagement and collaboration is one of the most important brand capabilities. This is especially relevant if we understand brands as institutional arrangements through which companies can best engage with sustainability (Lehner and Halliday 2014 ). Stakeholder engagement is key to overcoming loss of trust, lack of transparency and scepticism—issues addressed in two articles here in this Special Issue (Hesse et al.; Love et al.)—and to connecting more closely with consumers and integrating sustainability into their everyday lives in meaningful ways (Lehner and Halliday 2014 ), as Gidaković et al. (in this Issue) also suggest.

Although the selected articles bring many new important insights to the growing literature on sustainability and brands, there is still much to learn. We hope that this Special Issue will invite other scholars to advance the brand management literature on this very important topic with their research contributions. In our opinion, there is still much room for theoretical and empirical research on how brands can become platforms for collective efforts towards a more sustainable future.

One line of research that could be enriched is that which examines brand strategy in relation to sustainability. Here, future research could empirically explore the internal capabilities of brands and how they can be effectively used to advance sustainability. As sustainability engagement is a learning process for brands (Kitchin 2005 ), future research could explore how companies can use sustainability as a foundation for their brand strategy and the challenges and trade-offs involved. Further studies could explore the risks of using brands as tools for sustainability—both at the corporate and societal level. Research at the brand strategy level could explore the issues of collaboration around sustainability and, in this context, the issues of power and control to ensure the meaningful co-creation of sustainability through brands.

The second area that would benefit from more research on brands and sustainability concerns how consumers, other stakeholders and society interact with brands. In addition to focussing on different consumer responses in relation to brands and sustainability, researchers could further explore the processes of collaborative sustainable value creation as an integral part of sustainable brand management. An important question could be how the values on which sustainable brands are built are created and how they are put into practice. In this context, the views of the brand communities' and consumers on sustainability also need to be explored. This is particularly important to avoid the 'commodification' of brand sustainability discourse and to place sustainable branding at the heart of 'social production', where the co-creation and collaboration of multiple stakeholders lead to an overarching social value (Arvidsson 2008 ). Finally, future studies could also explore how sustainable brands can be meaningful for consumers' everyday lives and what (transformative) power they have to change the 'old' consumption practices to more sustainable ones.

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Authors and affiliations.

Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Essex Business School, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

Mario Burghausen

Competence Centre for Brand Management, St. Gallen, Switzerland

Joachim Kernstock

Teesside University Business School, Middlesbrough, UK

Mark A. P. Davies

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Correspondence to Urša Golob .

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Golob, U., Burghausen, M., Kernstock, J. et al. Brand management and sustainability: exploring potential for the transformative power of brands. J Brand Manag 29 , 513–519 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41262-022-00293-7

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Revised : 03 September 2022

Accepted : 05 September 2022

Published : 20 October 2022

Issue Date : November 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41262-022-00293-7

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