Brand as promise

Brands are widely regarded as a constellation of shared associations surrounding a company and its offerings. On the traditional view of brands, these associations are regarded as perceptions and attitudes in consumers’ minds in relation to a company. We argue that this traditional framing of brands...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business ethics
Authors: Bhargava, Vikram R. (Author) ; Bedi, Suneal (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2022
In: Journal of business ethics
Further subjects:B Promise
B Theory of brands
B Aufsatz in Zeitschrift
B Brand activism
B marketing ethics
B Brand as promise
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Summary:Brands are widely regarded as a constellation of shared associations surrounding a company and its offerings. On the traditional view of brands, these associations are regarded as perceptions and attitudes in consumers’ minds in relation to a company. We argue that this traditional framing of brands faces an explanatory problem: the inability to satisfactorily explain why certain branding activism initiatives elicit the moralized reactive attitudes that are paradigmatic responses to wrongdoing. In this paper, we argue for a reframing of brands that calls for viewing brands as a series of normatively binding expectations that are ethically akin to promises. Our promissory framing of brands avoids the explanatory problem, illuminates a number of ethical requirements on branding, and reconceptualizes the role of brand managers.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-021-04834-z