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Integrating corporate branding and sociological paradigms: A literature study

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Abstract

Corporate branding has received increased interest in marketing literature in the past several years, and the attention given to it received a strong upswing around the mid-1990s.1 To a great extent, the literature provides general agreement on how to perform the corporate branding process, and one of the aims of this article is to review these theories. Furthermore, this paper seeks to reflect upon and broaden the different opinions about organisations and corporate branding, acknowledging that participants of a corporate branding process will have diverse perceptions of organisations. Hence, this study uses sociology in order to analyse corporate branding, and by doing so the existing literature can be offered a more nuanced picture of the process. This article illustrates that employees', consumers' and managers' basic assumptions regarding the nature of organisations may be incompatible with each other. Corporate branding loses much of its intentionality unless managers realise that stakeholders have different world views and opinions of organisations. These diverse attitudes must be identified if corporate brand management is to be successful. The paper concludes with a summary that considers the different challenges a corporate brand manager faces when he or she makes allowances for people's differing world views.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BI Norwegian School of Management, Sandefjordgata 4M, Oslo, 0464, Norway

    Jon Hulberg

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  1. Jon Hulberg
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Correspondence to Jon Hulberg.

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1 Jon Hulberg recently completed a Master of Science in Marketing degree at BI Norwegian School of Management with a major in brand building management. He has worked with sales and marketing in several Norwegian companies operating in both domestic and global markets. Research interests include management of corporate brands and strategic customer relationship management.

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Hulberg, J. Integrating corporate branding and sociological paradigms: A literature study. J Brand Manag 14, 60–73 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.bm.2550054

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