Oriol Iglesias

Building Brands Together

Co-creation is a rapidly emerging area of research. However, there is a lack of understanding as to how organizations use co-creation to build relationships and generate value. How does participation emerge and what outcomes does it deliver? To generate insight into the co-creation process, we created an online brand community. Our findings show that people participate in a community because it offers them the chance to find fulfillment, to express their creativity, and to socialize. The findings have significant implications for marketing, branding, and research professionals because the research shows that managers have to see participants as integral to the brand.

Persuasive brand management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to build a conceptual framework that enables an improved comprehension of how brand meaning is constructed.Design/methodology/approach – Conceptual implications are drawn from an analysis and discussion of the literature in the fields of brand management, meanings, rhetoric, and narratives.Findings – Brand managers are progressively losing control over the multiple sources of brand meaning. Brand meaning is co‐created during the consumer‐brand relationship and the customer‐perceived brand meaning is re‐interpreted at each touchpoint that a consumer has with a managerially determined brand interface, a brand employee, or an external stakeholder.Originality/value – “Persuasive brand management” is presented as a new approach to brand management. It considers that the main activities of managers regarding brand strategy decisions involve processes of interpreting and creating meanings; as well as persuading a wide diversity of internal and external stakeholders.

The role of corporate culture in relationship marketing

Purpose – The role of corporate culture in relationship marketing is significantly under‐researched, although there is evident consensus in the literature about the importance of this topic. The purpose of this paper is to present a model for the corporate culture of a relationship‐marketing‐oriented company.Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative methodology involving 58 in‐depth interviews that were analysed and interpreted from a grounded theory standpoint was adopted in order to build a conceptual model.Findings – The two key shared values required to successfully put relationship marketing into effect are client orientation and a high degree of concern for employees. Furthermore, another six shared values (trust, commitment, teamwork, innovation, flexibility, and results orientation) also seem to facilitate the development of a relationship marketing orientation.Research limitations/implications – Although the research methodology is qualitative and does not allow statistical generalisation, the ...

Once upon a time: The role of rhetoric and narratives in management research and practice

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss a critical review of the role of rhetoric and narratives in management research and practice. Design/methodology/approach – Conceptual implications are drawn from the analysis and discussion of the papers of this special issue, as well as from previous literature. Findings – Managers and researchers will be unable to explore the potential of narratives and stories fully if, at the same time, they do not deeply comprehend the underpinnings of rhetoric. Originality/value – The paper further discusses the role of rhetoric and narratives in management research and practice and also explores the relationships between rhetoric and narratives.

Mapping the domain of the fragmented field of internal branding

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to build a comprehensive conceptual framework of internal branding, to demarcate this field from employer branding and to develop an updated definition of internal branding that incorporates the findings of the literature review and emerging views in branding. Design/methodology/approach – This research conducts a systematic review of the internal branding and employer branding literature following previously established procedures. Findings – The major findings of this research are that internal branding comprises five key components within a supportive corporate culture, namely, brand ideologies, brand leadership, brand-centred human resource management (HRM), internal brand communication and internal brand communities; and that internal branding is related yet distinct from employer branding in its discipline, focus, components, outcomes and the role of the brand. The paper concludes with a comprehensive definition of internal branding derived from the conceptual ...

Key changes and challenges for brands in an uncertain environment

Purpose – Brands are facing key changes and challenges that need to be addressed from both the academic as well as the managerial perspectives. This paper aims to discuss some of them and revises the research agenda of the field of brand management.Design/methodology/approach – Conceptual implications are drawn from the analysis and discussion of the papers of this special issue, as well as from previous literature.Findings – In this global world in which brands are present in many different countries and operate in really diverse business sectors the classical brand management theories and many of their assumptions may need to be revised.Originality/value – The paper discusses the key challenges that brands are facing and encourages academics to use the rich diversity of methodologies that they have at their disposal and that can be extremely helpful to address the future research agenda of this field.

How to support consumer-brand relationships

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the detailed human resource policies and practices that favor the expansion of consumer-brand relationships. Design/methodology/approach – Due to the lack of studies in this specific field, this research leans toward adopting an exploratory and interpretative methodology. The data stems from 53 in-depth interviews spanning three case studies in the hotel industry. Findings – The main contribution of this research is the identification and description of the human resource management (HRM) policies and practices which enable the development of consumer-brand relationships. The six policies and practices which this research considers key are: recruitment, promotion, training, communication, evaluation and compensation. Originality/value – This is the first research that identifies and describes the HRM policies and practices which enable the development of consumer-brand relationships.

A cross‐cultural assessment of leading values in design‐oriented companies

Purpose – This study is an attempt to approach design management from a cultural perspective. Specifically, the paper assumes that design orientation reflects an underlying organisational culture that distinguishes design‐oriented companies from the rest and reinforces their capability to generate competitive advantage from design management. The aim is to disentangle the main characteristics of this culture.Design/methodology/approach – A case study research approach was adopted to gain some initial insights on the cultural characteristics of the population considered in the present study.Findings – The results of the field study identify a set of general values and product‐related values shared by the design‐oriented companies considered in this research. In addition, the existence of functional sub‐cultures and cross‐cultural differences is analysed, together with a discussion on how organisational culture and functional sub‐cultures can co‐exist in this specific context.Research limitations/implicatio...

Context and time in brand image constructions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to further understanding of the roles that time and context play in consumers’ evolving brand image construction processes over time. Design/methodology/approach – This exploratory, qualitative research is based on the analysis and interpretation of 164 online consumer narratives pertaining to the consumers’ most memorable coffee moments. Findings – Consumers build images of a brand through both fleeting moments over time linked to special occasions and everyday moments in their lives over time. Understanding image construction processes thus must go beyond just physical (location) and psychological (social) circumstances. Activity processes (“When I am doing […]”) also are central to this understanding. Research limitations/implications – Time and context emerge as key determinants of consumers’ brand image processes and should hence be explicitly recognised in branding research. This study focuses only on brand admirers; because the study context refers to a busine...

The Key Role of HR Policies and Practices in Implementing a Relationship Marketing Orientation

The limitations of the transactional approach to marketing in services and industrial settings gave rise to a relationship marketing (RM) paradigm (Gronroos 1997), which emphasizes building, maintaining, and enhancing relationships between the company and its customers at a profit (e.g., Gronroos 1990). RM has received a lot of attention in the literature for various reasons (Berry 1995), however there is a clear need for more empirical research on how to support the implementation of a relationship marketing orientation (RMO) internally in organizations (Sin et al. 2005).