Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Muhammad Anees-ur-Rehman
is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Marketing, Oulu Business School, University of Oulu, Finland. His research
interest covers B2B branding and industrial marketing in SMEs. He is investigating how multiple strategic orientations impact
B2B brand performance.
Ho Yin Wong
is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.
He has published in International Marketing Review, Journal of Strategic Marketing, Managing Service Quality, Journal of Product and
Brand Management, Asia-Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistic, and Marketing Intelligence and Planning, among others. His main
research interests are branding, international marketing, and marketing strategy.
Mokter Hossain
is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Strategy and Venturing, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management,
Aalto University, Finland. He studies innovation management in general. His main research focus is open innovation,
crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, grassroots innovation, frugal innovation, and reverse innovation. He can be contacted at
mokter.hossain@aalto.fi.
ABSTRACT This study reviews the progress of brand orientation literature in twenty
years. A systematic literature review approach has been applied in this study. Four
major publication databases have been used to extract pertinent articles for the
review purpose. Four major areas in the literature have been examined: publication
activity, integration of brand orientation, research design, and contribution of
empirical findings. Based on the synthesis of the current literature, ten future research
recommendations are suggested for the advancement of literature on brand orientation. Thus, this study deepens our understanding of the current literature and recommends future research avenues on brand orientation.
Correspondence:
Muhammad Anees-ur-Rehman,
Department of Marketing, Oulu
Business School, University of
Oulu, P.O. Box 4600,
90014 Oulu, Finland.
E-mail: muhammad.anees-urrehman@oulu.fi
www.palgrave.com/journals
Anees-ur-Rehman et al
INTRODUCTION
The marketing concept predominately
maintains that the primary objective of an
organization is to satisfy customers latent
and expressed needs. This customer-centric
approach has therefore become the pinnacle
of organizational strategy and culture in
market-focused organizations. To implement this customer-centric approach within
the organization, a market-oriented strategy was conceptualized in the writings of
Shapiro (1988), Levitt (1986), Narver and
Slater (1990), Kohli and Jaworski (1990),
and Deshpande et al (1993). However, a few
years later, an opposing but related concept
of brand orientation emerged to directly
challenge market-oriented strategy. Unlike
market orientation, brand oriented strategy
contends that the primary objective of an
organization is to protect and advocate its
brand values and identity while performing
organizational activities, including satisfying
customers requirements. It develops organizational culture and strategy based on
brand-centric values. The concept of brand
orientation was originally conceived in the
Ph.D. dissertations of Mats Urde and Frans
Melin. However, the first journal publication on brand orientation was Urde (1994).
Later, other research scholars including
Philippa Hankinson, Simon Mzungu,
Nicky Nedergaard, and Christian Koch also
based their Ph.D. dissertations on brand
orientation. These dissertations thus have
substantially contributed toward the
advancement of brand orientation literature.
According to Urde (1999, p. 117), brand
orientation is an approach in which the processes of the organization revolves around the
creation, development, and protection of brand
identity in an ongoing interaction with target
customers with the aim of achieving lasting
competitive advantages in the form of brands.
Evans et al (2012, p. 1471) defined it as the
extent to which the organization embraces the
brand at a cultural level and uses it as a compass
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The scope of the study requires methodology which maintains an objective and
pragmatic approach. Therefore, a systematic literature review method was selected
which is commonly used in literature
review studies in management sciences
(Keranen et al, 2012; Mainela et al, 2014).
The research methodology of the study is
explained in the following four subsections.
Scope of study
Brand orientation is a strategic orientation
of an entity which primarily aims to build
stronger brand (Urde et al, 2013). It is a
value-based brand-centric strategy for
brand and organizational management.
More precisely, brand-oriented entities
accept the strategic importance of brand
and they take an inside-out perspective in
brand management. The inside-out perspective is the exclusive characteristic of
brand-oriented strategy and Urde et al
(2013, p. 15) described it in the following
manner, first, organizational values are
translated into core values and promises (what
the brand stands for), which guide the organizations efforts (how it works and behaves);
second, those core values are converted into
extended customer values (what the brand offers
and how it is perceived).
Brand-oriented strategy has been examined in relation to several aspects of brand
and organizational management. However,
the term of brand orientation, or similar,
had been also used in the literature to refer
the buying behavior of consumers toward
brand (e.g., Wilkes and Valencia, 1986).
Thus, the scope of this study does not
Search of articles
Four databases, namely the Web of Science, Scopus, ProQuest, and EBSCO,
were used to search peer-reviewed journal
articles. The search was limited to these
databases because they cover a diverse
range of peer-reviewed journals in economics and management sciences. Three
search keywords brand orientation,
brand oriented, and brand-oriented
were used. The search was performed with
the aim of finding articles which used any
of the search keywords in the title, keywords or abstract. These keywords were
used one at a time in all four databases.
Search was limited to peer-reviewed journal articles published in English, and the
time period for article publication was not
specified. The first search was performed in
April 2015 and we found 459 articles. After
removing the duplications, we were left
with 168 articles, and these articles were
then collected. For about next four
months, the authors could not significantly
work on this project due to time constraints, and thus a second search was performed in August 2015 to include
additional articles and to update the article
list. We found eight new articles, and
therefore 176 articles were taken for further
analysis.
Selection of articles
In this stage, our objective was to include
those articles which are within the scope of
the study. Each of the 176 articles was
checked to establish whether the article is
relevant and meets the scope of this study.
Some articles were not so clear, and
therefore the full article was read thoroughly before taking an inclusion or
Anees-ur-Rehman et al
Publication activity
Figure 1 provides the publication frequency by year from 1994 to August 2015.
The first article on brand orientation was
written by Mats Urde in 1994. Only six
articles were published within the first
decade (1994--2003). It shows that either
scholars were unfamiliar with the concept
or it failed to attract considerable attention.
From these six publications, the article of
Urde (1999) was the most noticeable
because it clarified the concept and paved
the way for further advancement. Although
the publication frequency has improved in
the following six years (2004--2009), it still
did not show considerable improvement.
Compared to the first decade, more
empirical articles appeared during this time
period. These empirical articles advanced
the brand orientation literature by using
industry-specific empirical data (e.g.,
22
11
6
4
3
1
Figure 1:
3
1
in 2013 is a special issue on brand orientation by the Journal of Marketing Management (Vol. 29, issue 9--10).
Articles on brand orientation have been
published in 36 journals. Table 1 shows the
list of prominent journals and classifies
them under a common theme. Almost half
of the articles appeared in the marketing
and brand management journals, followed
by nonprofit and strategic management
journals. Journal of Marketing Management has published the highest number of
articles. Thus, it seems that mainstream
marketing journals are confidently
responding to this evolving concept.
%
34.2
14.4
14.4
7.9
5.2
2.5
21.0
100
Anees-ur-Rehman et al
Description
Philosophical school
Behavioral school
Hybrid school
Cultural school
Performance school
Strategic school
Marketing school
Omni-brand school
Corporate brand school
Source: Balmer (2013, p. 729).
Research design
This subsection provides an overview of
the research methodology used in the
brand orientation literature. From 76 articles, only 15 articles were found to be
Anees-ur-Rehman et al
studies on small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) (e.g., Reijonen et al, 2014;
Laukkanen et al, 2013).
We found that the overwhelming
majority of empirical qualitative studies
used the case study or in-depth interviews
or both (e.g., Wymer et al, 2015; Nedergaard and Gyrd-jones, 2013). In empirical
quantitative studies, several articles used the
exploratory factor analysis or ANOVA
methods for theory or model development
purposes (e.g., Reijonen et al, 2012, 2014),
while other used confirmatory, SEM, or
regression analysis for testing causal relationships or hypotheses (e.g., Baumgarth
and Schmidt, 2010; Matanda and Ndubisi,
2013).
Research scope/context
References
Financial performance
Brand-based innovation
Person-organization t and employee intention to stay
Reijonen et al (2012)
Rentschler et al (2011)
Reijonen et al (2015)
Evans et al (2012)
Gyrd-Jones et al (2013)
Baxter et al (2013)
Anees-ur-Rehman et al
oriented approach responsible for coordinating and bridging the gap between the
other two steps. Lee (2013) explored the
rebranding process in brand-oriented
charities and identified three tensions.
These counterproductive tensions are
related to the realignment of the external
image and internal identity, engaging with
multiple stakeholders and balancing marketing requirements with organizational
identity. However, both articles encouraged the role of brand orientation in
making a rebranding process successful.
Anees-ur-Rehman et al
FUTURE RESEARCH
RECOMMENDATIONS
This study has found research gaps which
still exist in the brand orientation literature,
even though the literature has grown in the
past two decades. To address these gaps,
this study recommends ten avenues for
future research to gain a fuller picture of
brand orientation.
First, the existing literature on brand
orientation mainly focuses either on a
corporate level or product level. What role
brand orientation plays in strategic business
units (SBUs) remains unexamined. Particularly in large organizations, the SBU is
often composed of several individual
products and services. And because the
SBUs strategies need to be in congruence
with overall marketing strategies (Whitney,
1995), topics such as how brand orientation
flows from the corporate level to SBU level
to product level, and how to manage the
interplay of brand-oriented strategy
between these levels can be further studied.
The multinational conglomerate companies (e.g., Samsung) or even large media
companies (e.g., Comcast) could be an
interesting empirical context in this regard.
The second recommendation is related to
the first one to a certain extent, that is, how
to implement brand orientation in a company. Successful marketing strategies
involve robust and effective implementation (Ramaseshan et al, 2013). They further
argue that strategy cannot be executed in
isolation from its operational contexts.
With the ever changing market environ-
Anees-ur-Rehman et al
market orientations. The hybrid orientation basically proposes that a firm may
develop more than one strategic orientation simultaneously, with the possibility to
develop these orientations at different priority levels, which can coexist and complement each other. This approach could
be used to examine how high or low levels
of strategic orientations produce the highest possible performance effect (see Atuahene-Gima and Kos, 2001; Mzungu et al,
2015). Under this approach, different pairs
of strategic orientations may be examined,
for instance, entrepreneurial orientation
and brand orientations, or market orientation and brand orientation and so on.
Third, it is worthwhile to examine how
firms may change strategic orientations
over time due to changing circumstances.
In this regard, how to change from one
orientation to another, what obstacles cause
problems, and what outcomes of changing
orientations are to be expected.
Sixth, very few studies look into brand
orientation from the international marketing perspective. A review of the existing
literature, in the section of publication
activity, finds that only two brand orientation studies are in the context of international marketing. The two studies on
international brand orientation in the
existing literature can serve as the point of
reference. More empirical and conceptual
studies are needed to elucidate the role of
brand orientation in international marketing. As suggested by King et al (2013,
p. 179), further research on (service) brand
orientation would illuminate the unique
challenges presented in a (service) industry
that is dominated by Western cultural values but is developing in an eastern cultural
context. In particular, Wong and Merrilees (2007) suggest examining the impacts
of various international branding issues on
international firm performance. Particular
areas can include the interrelationships
among firms marketing and branding
Anees-ur-Rehman et al
CONCLUSION
Research on brand orientation has grown
in the past twenty years. Various conceptual and empirical studies have advanced
the knowledge of brand orientation. This
study has systematically reviewed brand
orientation literature from four major perspectives - publication activity, integration
and extension of brand orientation concept, research design, and contribution of
empirical findings. However, four main
limitations are present in this study due to
systematic literature review approach. First,
only four databases were used to search for
relevant articles. Even though these four
databases are commonly used in the field,
some research work might have been left
out due to not being indexed in these
databases. Second, only articles published
in English are included. Third, literature
related to brand orientation which could be
available in the books, dissertations, conference papers and proceedings, magazines
and trade journals, and other sources are
not included. Fourth, those journal articles
which have not used any of the search
keywords in the title, abstract, or keywords
may have been left out.
The review of the existing literature
demonstrates that the literature has evolved
from covering what brand orientation is to
why brand orientation is important for
entities. In addition, we found that
researchers have used a number of research
methods to examine the brand orientation
concept. Research gaps still exist despite the
growing interest from academics and practitioners. Thus, this study has proposed ten
future research recommendations to fill the
research gaps in the existing literature. With
empirical findings from these proposed
areas, a more comprehensive understanding
of brand orientation can be expected.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Muhammad
Anees-ur-Rehman
and
Mokter Hossain are grateful to the Finnish
Cultural Foundation for funding this study.
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