Brand Meaning

Citation

Whelan, S. (2011), "Brand Meaning", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 45 No. 4, pp. 692-694. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090561111111398

This book encourages readers to think of brand management as brand meaning management. Central to this is the belief that brands allow marketing managers to add meaning to their products and services, but that ultimately it is the consumer who determines the meaning of brands. The book explores the varied sources of brand meaning and proposes a unique framework for understanding brands through understanding brand meaning. In doing so, Batey questions some traditional marketing concepts and makes well reasoned arguments, through effectively integrating theories and concepts using a multidisciplinary approach with his perspective on meaning, beginning with the opening sentence of the book:

Though companies create brand identities, people create brand meaning. The meanings people find in brands help them make sense of, and give shape to, the world around them.

Batey argues that meaning is at the heart of consumer behavior, and that the role of the individual consumer in the creation and interpretation of brand meaning is a very active one. In doing so, the book lays a foundation for thinking about brands from a new, holistic and multidisciplinary perspective and describes practical ways in which brands can be managed. The rationale of the book is that it offers a comprehensive understanding and brand meaning framework for brand management which would appeal strongly to both academic and managerial audiences. Academics will appreciate the author's efforts to effectively integrate theory and contributions from consumer behavior and other relevant fields of psychology, semiotics and linguistics and the genuinely comprehensive and useful references for further reading. Managers will appreciate the practical approach taken in the book, with strong, interesting examples provided throughout.

The first four chapters of the book are concerned with the way consumers as humans perceive the world around them. Chapter 1 begins by reviewing the development of brands, focusing particularly on the relationship between brands and consumers, while introducing the concept of the “brand engram” and a definition of brand as the consumer perception and interpretation of a cluster of associations, attributes, benefits and values.

Chapter 2 focuses on human motivation and how and why we as consumers seek meaning. Incorporating means end theory and archetypal theory, the needs and value systems that drive human behavior are explored in detail in terms of the connections between consumers and products and categories. In particular, the chapter investigates how consumers define themselves through brands and the meanings they provide and how some brands achieve a meaningful, deep rooted resonance with consumers in the human psyche.

Perception is the focus of Chapter 3 of the book. It reviews the perceptual process and how consumers make sense of brands suggesting that we rely on our senses to make sense of the world around us, including the brands we come into contact with. The chapter discusses the sensory systems and how we process and thus perceive sensory information.

In Chapter 4, Batey examines the way consumers find meaning in objects generally and then in brands more specifically. Drawing on contributions from psychology, semiotics and linguistics, there is a discussion of semantic space, concepts such as denotation and connotation, tangible and intangible properties and how objects get public and private meaning. The focus later in the chapter is on how objects get symbolic meaning, and what possessions mean to consumers with regard to symbolic consumption. Building on these discussions, the chapter concludes with the process of meaning transfer and how rituals, including consumption rituals, are a way consumers use to assign meaning.

It is in the second half of the book however that Batey offers his most important contributions. Chapter 5 begins with a definition of brand meaning, the central subject of the book from a neuro‐psychological context. There is a special interest on the brand associative networks that results from receiving and processing brand information. The unique contribution of the brand‐meaning framework, which includes primary brand meaning and implicit brand meaning, is the focus of detailed discussion. The framework has intuitive appeal at a conceptual level, even though the author does not offer any empirical evidence for the model. This is followed by a practice‐based discussion emphasizing the importance of implicit brand meaning, with generous case examples discussing the many varied sources of brand meaning.

Brand meaning and its implications for brand strategy is the focus of Chapter 6 where there is coverage of concepts such as brand differentiation, brand extensions, portfolio management and consumption constellations. This chapter also includes generous coverage of strong, practice‐based examples and a discussion of what factors can increase the chances of success in brand extensions.

The evolution of brand meaning is covered in Chapter 7. It is proposed that brands begin as labels on products but can evolve in meaning as they become more culturally meaningful than category based. In this chapter, Batey introduces the brand evolution model and this is followed by a discussion on how brands evolve from categories into culture with an emphasis on brand communities and the importance of evolution and consistency in the way a brand should stand for something distinctive and valued.

In the final chapter, the theme is brand communication with a discussion on advertising the brand versus branding the advertising. The chapter covers advertising from a semiotic viewpoint and widens the discussion of integrated marketing communications to customer touch points with an engaging discussion of how our use of media is changing and the implications that these changes have for brands.

In sum, Brand Meaning is a fine book incorporating some original ideas about brands from a meaning perspective that are of interest to both academics and practitioners alike. The book makes comprehensive and enthusiastic arguments using a multidisciplinary approach for how consumers find and create meaning about brands. The ideas contained in the book, in particular the brand meaning model, have unquestionable intuitive appeal. From an academic perspective, one of the shortcomings of the book however is a lack of supporting empirical evidence, although this is minimized by the very strong emphasis throughout on practice using many detailed examples and case studies throughout. The model has merit that may stimulate further research and discussion among both academics and marketing managers, and shows how much still has to be done to encourage the addition of informed thinking about brand meaning management. For these reasons, as a reviewer I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in brand management.